the mockingbird has heard me utter
her name in sift benediction that
i hear it in the causeway cawing
it into the howling winds until
all i hear is my heart in my head
and her glow rattling around my
chest cavity of dessicated organic
failures crammed tightly into the
silver barred birdcage with the
lone dead canary hanging upside
down

the miles tick ever higher but i
am no closer to home as shattered
dreams impregnate the tires until
all that remains is an odometer
hastily wired into misfiring muck
spinning faster as this mobius
illusion turns everything into
pandora’s pot of many sundered
ills and i cannot see the signs
that line the byways between the
absence