what prize did you hope to hold in those smooth
hands for the plan sketched in cloud and unbuilt—
what melody might have flown forth if you
freed yourself from petty politics of
the boardroom and tested those scrawny wings—
but you sat with a job safe as socks and
a single number near the cold solstice
now in the damp the aches where you bend while
those black glacier teeth topple in tepid
tea you mumble to the cat it wasn’t
all bad these bloody feet could still march this
hand salute the lurking shadow who smiles
at the coughing cubicle dwellers soon
to be churned into cheap fertilizer
other animals 