\ posy

...
Through, through the window, oh, no higher than the last gray leaves falling from the cottonwood, I saw the cruelest dance, a bohemian waxwing hovered for a moment until I noticed a slow flying insect, maybe a midge or a lacewing, and the bird would halt her wings, drop to the fly, take it in her beak and rise a few feet, then release the poor, helpless thing, and then as the midge would take wing again, the bird would insist for another turn. She would wait a little longer each time as the lacewing needed more and more energy to gather his escape, and in the end, he wouldn't even flap his own wings, but relied upon simple gravity for flight.

I couldn't bear to watch the last march under the drawn swords of the lowest branches, budding alders at attention fighting for the scarcity of light closer to earth, because I experienced envy. I wanted to be attended to this way, dropped from the clutches of a superior being, angel, you, released and re-released and caught and recaptured and adored and fulfilled until I am utterly spent.

In the lowest drawer, too close to the floor to bend, we had our own space, and in it we would keep our most treasured possessions, keys and coins and pages torn from our favorite books, and they were prisoners to us like prey of the alate. Gray, gray prey of hope and circumstance, so fortunate these light winged, short lived satellites, happy to be chosen from among the masses, you picked me to feast upon. I cannot be any vaguer when I say, oh, you, you, you.