Birds of Prey
John Sibley Williams
Flags parade.
Voices char.
All fires hurry
to ash, back
to a silent gray earth,
back to bullets
pressed into a boy’s palm;
a choice that is not really
a choice at all.
Just another slow-moving dawn
& birds of prey break it like bones
& everything seems worthless
in its own way; brief & therefore
wondrous. Men
with eyes like windows with all the lights
shut off & their own dead to attend to
or atone for or both
& a land that’s trying so hard to speak
with its tongue cut out.