Futile

but beautifully

synchronized,

two wings keeping

perfect time.

Last flight.

Landing to scavenge

near a traffic island,

then a too-fast car or

too-late escape.

It matters nothing now.

Wings conducting

the last pulse.

Tomorrow will show

only a rag

of mashed bones

and blackened feathers

on a road of

hurried commuters.

Nothing I saw

that day

moved me more

until, later,

a sunset so majestic people

stopped to take pictures.

A smudge under wheels

and a volcanic sky

summed up my day

concisely as an age

is held in a name:

for Elizabethan, read Shakespeare

who presented overhead wonders

as signifying global events.

Palace intrigues struck

planetary sparks

for him but royalty

means less to me

than fledglings waiting

for sustenance that

never comes.

Sunset fades.

I drive away the thought of

wings forever beating the air.

Going no-where.

Silence and beauty signifying nothing

but hunger and decay.

***

We are extremely grateful to the Third Year Illustration students at Edinburgh College of Art, and Harvey Dingwall for making this collaboration possible. The Citizen Writing Group is part of Citizen, our flagship communities project which is supported by players of People’s Postcode Lottery and through the PLACE Programme (funded by the Scottish Government, City of Edinburgh Council, and the Edinburgh Festivals, and supported and administered by Creative Scotland).