The Canaries Carry Me Still By whittling hours the walls dip without life, come back to the ground, come back to the owners, furniture distilled from plank and seam, westward outthrust into flames of my Audubon’s canaria; I remove my spelunking helmet and feed my canaries pocket grains. Some heron pox has claimed these walls where hoar paint once gussied us a home— yet I and my canaries own nothing. Aurora. The home is insisting to empty; tension in the passionate laugh. Now to move on without walls or cabinet, without this accoutrement garrison, is the ugly, familiar distance between yet more residential strides, my share of them obese, pulled into and from them as on rails… My canaries start to choke; again, we move, my rucksack filled, yet glutted too large for the back. The walls become caved mineshaft, invisible pit, scum and gold out of my elaborate reach. In the yard, the small beaks pinch my clothing, hold tight, and fly us all upward, and I with my canaries, as the air, move on. Ray Succre