Allegory by Christopher Locke

–April 14, 2020

A blackbird’s trapped inside my bedroom,
popping the bright window like a child’s
gloved hand. Golden eyes eerie with pupils—
all of him nerve-wracked & wired & furiously
mute. I want what he wants, so I bend & creep
to the other window, grit-toothed & pillow
shielded, alive with Hitchcockian terrors I still
imagine, even at this age. I fumble with the sash,
look over my shoulder at another dry flourish,
his desire heated to almost a reckoning, & I
duck & weave & grimace until the frame
gapes & he funnels like chimney smoke up
into all that blue. But I never think to ask
where did he come from, & how did he choose
the silence of this house, this captive place
where we still dream dark as those wings.