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