The Sunday Poem: I Saw and Heard

Sorry for posting so late, but I was at a very enjoyable party up in LA today, and wasn’t home most of the day. This here is a rewrite of a fairly old poem, mostly just cleaned up for meter.

I saw and heard

A tethered girl with a guitar, restringing
On a park bench, clothes and voice wringing
Wrinkles from a rag. She twitched her head,
A nervous finch, her bones aslide, fluid
Bumps beneath her drum-tight skin, a flock
Of birds enclosed by brittle flesh, a-cracking,
And cracking only when she sang.

                                        I feel
A minor need to make her something real:
To steal aloft the eagles trapped within,
To cut them free from helpless hampering skin,
Take hold of jesses, loose them in a spasm,
To watch the music soar past sky and chasm.

But “real” lies in beholder’s hearts, and “real”
Is not lived day to day — is just a tale
Told to children full of fancy dreams,
Who picture avian souls and eagle’s screams.

The whole short scene was just her playing.
She’d sung some words before, I’d say,
Will sing again, will strive, earn cash, survive,
And lyrics do not modulate our lives.

But where is the poem in that?