1.
I thought it was a head of lettuce.
2.
I took it for a nut I had to crack
To get at the kernel.
3.
The carpet looked pleated and old.
My claws removed the skin on that back,
Exposed the smoother, brighter flesh.
4.
There were two marbles on the mask
Two marbles floating in two baths
The marbles shone and tripled the sky and me.
I broke them with my beak to restore
The order of things:
One sky and one of me.
5.
The road did it.
Broke the cord in the back.
It lay there quite frozen
Eyes on two still points
In the blue beyond.
My beak and feet put out
The speck in its eyes.
6.
I clean. I takeaway. I vacuum smells
No one wants to drive through.
I act like whiteout on mistakes
No one wants to see.
I am a mini-landfill.
Give me time to evolve and you can feed me
Your plutonium, treat me like the storage depths
Of a gutted mountain.
Fred D’Aguiar