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.