Byline, Be Sky

I meet the birds on their
terrain, the gray of.

Chimney swifts smudged, sifted
from clouds like feathered

cinders, all is blurred or
wisps of smoke, an attendance.

We watch from the roof
of Birmingham's tallest building

& I imagine a flight without
knowledge of falling.

It may be spring. It may be
wind warming a given name.

It may be trapped inside
[naturalized] this thing

I wanted, a motion down-
ward, a foot driving stacks

of sustained Ds over a piano,
the arms of Rilke's terrible

angels. Even the holy cannot
be loyal to three flags

within Thee. I am severaled,
torn from my mother's tongue,

a world keeps calling wings wrong.
Once I ran through high grass

to greet a scarecrow, my hands
holding a skirt aloft. Now,

building, let me go. O
sky, make me stop.

--Alina Stefanescu