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LIVVY OWEN

Third Prize - 2022 Tower Poetry Competition, 'Dream'

 

Dreambird

If you could hold, as I do, an alpine swift of yearning

her brittle bones that carry magnitudes

and know that your palm can offer her nothing

 

If you could hear, as I do, the memories of long-fossilised giants

roar beneath her feathers

and taste gunpowder, but hear only birdsong

 

If you could watch, as I do, my dreambird tip a wing in farewell

to the saffron moon

and drink in the dawn from a narrow window

 

If you could wonder, as I do, if she will see the valleys of Aranyani

and leave behind the burning ocean,

else softly sink, forget that you can fly

 

If you could see her now, as I do, returned from feverish flight

to sing the skies blue again,

would you not wonder why she chooses to stay?

 

She is impossible

and yet there she is