After Brendan Constantine from an antique rug beater to a flamingo We have never met, but I want you to know how much I envy your feathers, pink as a cloud at sunrise, nearly weightless, with their hollow shafts, capable of carrying you great distances. For myself, I go nowhere except out into the dusty yard, where the maid channels her resentment by smacking the master’s Persian carpet till it yields years of ground in sand, blown in from the beach. I am all knots, woven of bamboo, while you arc in one tapered sweep, your neck and wings, your beak, curved as a church key, streamlined and graceful. I stay at home alone and dream, while you travel yearly with extended family, noisy but amiable, through skies of seamless blue, landscapes of cloud, knowing beyond question the exact location of the beach in Tunisia where you were hatched. I would love to ride on your back, tucked between your wings, though I am afraid to lose my job, beating the world clean, a task we have great need of these days, but if you ever wish to come out of the cold and damp, to dry between your toes, I invite you to stand with me by the fire, each of us balancing on one long leg.
Robbi Nester is the author of four books of poetry, the most recent being Narrow Bridge (Main Street Rag, 2019) and editor of three anthologies, including The Plague Papers. Her poems, reviews, articles and essays have been widely published. Most recently, they have appeared in Sheila-Na-Gig, Verse-Virtual, North of Oxford, Inflectionist Review, and are forthcoming in Spillway, Tampa Review, and Gargoyle.
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