For Charlie in His Wheelchair by the Evening Window
By Melissa McKinstry
And if an owl came to perch on your sill, razor beak and talon feet, feather and vowel, lanterns for eyes, dropping five questions like molten silver into the cool night air, you’d turn your blue gaze toward him in answer. You would teach him all about being bound— the shiver of the rabbit tricked in a trap with only the breeze free in your ears. He would teach you about wings— glittering fingers spread over green trees. You both know the hard truth— the intractable instinct to survive, the hum of the earth, its endless shiver.
Melissa McKinstry lives in San Diego where she mothers her disabled adult son, curates a neighborhood poet tree, and assists with translation of Yiddish literature. She earned her MFA in poetry at Pacific University. Her work has appeared in Rattle and Alaska Quarterly Review, earned honorable mention for the Steve Kowit Poetry Prize as well as contests at Crab Creek Review and The Comstock Review, and is forthcoming in december.
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Gorgeous poem.