JOHNMICHAEL SIMON POETRY

this princess was born

with her umbilical cord

wrapped tightly around

her mother’s regal throat

causing both of them much anguish

until in mid-adolescence

with a wrench that almost broke

mama’s neck she ran off with a bird loving

guitar player who

imprisoned her in a glass cage

 

she phoned mama every day

            from the jazzfest

            flying high yet always

            connected, invisible magnetism

across the ether

 

[returning to queenie’s bedside

after her hospitalization and

subsequent remarkable recovery]

 

now, together again, I overhear them

at night, through the thin partition

of my cage

            as I twang alternately

            with each of them
            a reverberating harmonic

                        princess – queenie

queenie – princess

 

my notes have snapped

I’m down to my last string

but I’ll keep on serenading them

until that too loses elasticity and fails

 

what else can a song bird do?