Kory M. Shrum

Death of Sky

All considered the cost of such loss—
Gray doves and canaries the color of
daffodils, nightingales in song.

The shifty finches portended wing-pinned.
To have two worlds reduced to one
wouldn’t be easy for anyone.

Intuition had not prepared them
for the limits of a sky-less
life. The burden of horizontal

trajectories, power only
to move one’s body forward or
back, weakens the spirit. Displaced

birds came from everywhere, birds
from mouths. Birds hung off coat racks,
appeared between teeth, in mailboxes

and supermarkets. Birds colliding
with cars, with the ocean. A whirlwind
of feathers disguised all—

the world became a bird. Dog-birds,
tree-birds, house-birds, God-birds—
with beaks open, bodies

in euphonious song shrieking
against assimilation—against
our reforming latitudinous dance.