The Eagles

The earth locks up the truth about life
even though the blood tells moody lies
when, like the smooth afternoon sea,
it feels the eagles flapping freely overhead.

Their metal feathers,
their crushing claws,
that taste they have for love or death—
a longing to drink from eye sockets with an iron beak,
to kiss the outside of this world once and for all—
it flies up like desire,
like the clouds that never block the way,
like the glowing blue, a heart already out there
opening for all the world in its freedom.

The serene eagles
will never be boats,
they won’t be dream or bird,
they won’t be a box where sad memories lie forgotten,
where opals or emeralds are put away.

The sun that thickens in our eyes,
that gazes freely down at our eyes,
the sun is an undying bird, bully of the chests,
sinking its rage into them against a trapped body.

The violent wings
that beat faces as if they were eclipses,
that split open veins of dead sapphire,
that section up the clotted blood,
these wings break the wind into a thousand pieces—
marble or impervious space—
where the clarity that flashes at night
is a dead hand, held back.