Feather Bowl

I could spend the whole day plucking tiny quills

from my brown pillows: sensing sharp small needle
pricks to pull them out of the velour: pop! – a feather,
and another, and another, sometimes white, sometimes
a varied speckled tan and brown: one wonders at
the appellation “down” – they're flicking up and asking
for release, and I can think of no completer feast of touch
.
than to array my palms across this field of plush
in search of them: although they don't oblige, it seems
to me, if I have indicated an excessive greed: perhaps,
sometimes, I scare them with my need, my zeal – my
roving hands in search of something more to pick and peel
from an oblivion: why does it satisfy me so? I've always
liked stuffed things: like wonton, ravioli, or a petit four:
.
latent in a skin: the notion of within! – inside the hide
resides the jagged interest: complication, crunch, a twist –
resistance to the blandness of an unmarked cover:
fluff-and-dart of feather: complex denizens of art –
extracting them with an exacting patience: all implicitly
an act of homage to my father: oh, the bother he would
go to! – cleaning pipes with pipe cleaners: fluff-and-dart
.
of wire, briar, bits of cotton stuff. I've saved the feathers
I have stolen from my cushions and remanded them
to the ceramic bowl my father used to stash his ash
and smoking apparatus: puffy symbols in the hard-
baked clay: a stuffing and container which do justice
to the way my father sought his pleasures, and the way

I seek my own: forage for secrets, make them known.

..............

(I wrote this over ten years ago. Found it again and it told me it wanted 

to say hi to the living human world once more. I am obliging it here.)

.