For Helen Foster
All my family want
is to live in the air
in a big house of feathers
live in a tree for two
with a couple of eggs
under a cloudy roof that leaks rain
with a green curtain that doesn’t fall off
when summer slips over the skyline.
All my family want
is a home in the city
but if that home
were ever taken out
to make way for nothing
chopped down by a lumberjack
with a black belt in karate
or if it fell
into the arms of the beautiful wind
would we have somewhere else to go
a second home in the sky
somewhere to crash overnight
in a park or on a street
somewhere to make
space above the grass
and the undergrowth for us
and the next generation of eggheads
somewhere to shit on the traffic
somewhere where mammals
don’t throw things out of the sky
but if we had to move
we wouldn’t want to move
in spring or summer
move our shiny pickings
across the air
to a detached row of town houses
not until our young
had grown tall enough to roost
only then would we move
flying north to live
in wild domestic bliss
in some leafy suburb
a family treehouse in feather-land
overlooking a prime piece
of indigenous architecture
where we’d sing the city to sleep
sing to the sun falling from the sky
before dozing off in the moonlight
all snug and tucked-up
under a canopy of leaves
rocking in the beautiful dark
while the wind blows off the Atlantic
like one of Bob Dylan’s songs.
Kenny Knight
.