Necessary Medicine

“The wren lives in brakes and crevices"
      -Aristotle Historia Animalium IX.xi

“The hand does not divide into hands nor the face into faces."
     –Aristotle Historia Animalium I.i

*

This is the way things are: the wren skids between cirrus curls,

bark-brown against the suffering blue of afternoon
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The tube that leads from the generator to my boy’s mouth

is clear and lined with pin-prick drops that bebop along...

***

the metonymic chain should be swallowed slow... the wren 

will ride on broader wings, hidden within the plumage of within
****
He does not breathe without the presence of my hand against the mask,

vapors, ravaged metals, enter his throat like rapids fall from fissured stones

*****

The wren will be crowned king of birds, cunning in yellowed plume

watered-yellow as the eye of the broad-backed glider it rode upon
******
This is the way things are: I cannot see inside my boy.

His lungs I failed to build may be etched with blue vessels

*******

The miniature mechanic of the sky will sail down on razor feathers,

its clever ascent guided by necessity. 
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He leans into me, slow. His belly, all that living estuary,

fits in the palm of me. The lungs I failed to build I flood with mist.