When love was a question, the message arrived <br />in the beak of a wire and plaster bird. The coloratura <br />was hardly to be believed. For flight, <br /> <br />it took three stagehands: two <br />on the pulleys and one on the flute. And you <br />thought fancy rained like grace. <br /> <br />Our fog machine lost in the Parcel Post, we improvised <br />with smoke. The heroine dies of tuberculosis after all. <br />Remorse and the raw night air: any plausible tenor <br /> <br />might cough. The passions, I take my clues <br />from an obvious source, may be less like climatic events <br />than we conventionalize, though I’ve heard <br /> <br />of tornadoes that break the second-best glassware <br />and leave everything else untouched. <br />There’s a finer conviction than seamlessness <br /> <br />elicits: the Greeks knew a god <br />by the clanking behind his descent. <br />The heart, poor pump, protests till you’d think <br /> <br />it’s rusted past redemption, but <br />there’s tuning in these counterweights, <br />celebration’s assembled voice.<br /><br />Linda Gregerson<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/ex-machina/
