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by Gerald Dicen
It's half-past three. But the silence is curious.
There is something fading in the immediate void.
So I rushed to the stairs and found my way
to the porch with the aid of the dusty banisters
only to find the cage empty.
Did the feline appearing to be dozing off
snatch her left wing and entirely?
But there are no signs of cluttered plume!
There's only the squeaking metal swinging in the air
back and forth like a pendulum
slowly yielding to the gravity of a realization.
That after my wondering mind rested,
when shadows slowly retracted as colors
bathe the tenuous reality,
when the sound of dewdrops
falling on a mountain of crushed beer cans
joined the early morning cacophony,
and daybreak finally erupted,
I just held on to the belief that
unlike the composed and sturdy beast
still haunting in its deepest sleep,
a host of sparrows fluttering by the windowsill,
they are what has become of my raven.
 This is a finalist in Cha's "Addiction" Poetry Contest. Gerald Dicen on "Re-apparition": The first version of my poem “Re-apparition” was comprised of three long stanzas. The idea of it was conceived when I woke up one morning to the sound of a fluttering sparrow. Its delicate wing vibrating against the glass window of my room created a sound so pleasant it resonated an unfamiliar feeling in me—a lightness, perhaps. For me, the term ‘addiction’ is a simplification of a rather complex system of circumstances and choices. Its origins can be unknown to a person, hence, an apparition. |