Ghost Flight 

A crow feather rests on a town sidewalk. 
A thousand hurried feet pass, splashing 
puddles in another spring storm. So light once 
the air barely noticed it, now it soaks 
in a foreign weightiness as the sun vanishes, 
all evening, all night, blankets down with warm 
morning fog. 
         Nearly dries as crawling sunlight
passes over. Stays. Decays ever so gently. 
Withers darkness to grays. Rainbow iridescence 
exhaling. Then, gone. Wind lifts what’s left just so,
mostly quill, like a stripped limb. 
      The humming
inky ghost remains, like rustiness of leaf stain. 
A thought of a thing, only. A feather once, yes.  
An outline, hued mostly between the lines now, 
waiting for the next hint of coming rain.  

Box of Crowns  

We found a closet full of down pillows
for the estate sale as we prowled the home. 
Seven of the old blue striped sort, stacked 
upon one another on the high shelves, 
pressed to the ceiling out of the way. 

There were names in cursive script 
on the glassed cotton, in dark pen, 
all in the same hand. Name: Date of death. 
The oldest from 1903. The last, 1981, 
with a name scratched out in a different hand. 

A hat box, from Macy’s, rested at head level,
labeled Mullins Family, held no fancy hat 
from a New York trip, but soft layers 
of wax paper-wrapped feather crowns 
extracted from each death pillow, 
tightly nested feathers, again labeled 
with names and dates, gently with pencil. 

The old mountain family believed 
the strange swirls were woven up in pillows 
at those very instants of death, 
as loved ones finally quit tossing and turning.  

The box could have easily been mistaken
for an abandoned collection of trial and error, 
never-used nests, by birds particular plumages
found in family’s pillow cases, little homes
newly made, eggs freshly laid, 
some nightly tossed heads of the living 
offering a rocking warmth, an odd hatching, 
the little birds then, in the mostly dark, 
commencing with the work that only comes 
naturally when surrounded by the twisted 
and confusing lingering of ailing kin.