Flight

Kevin Irie

What can you buy
with one small sound?

The pigeons that flew
in and out of your childhood

now settle on telephone wires
in Toronto.

The clucking of hens
in Kensington Market

captures your past
in one light cage

small enough
to be carried by hand.

You've made the long
migration through words

to finally arrive, at home
with English,

that species of language
that gathers in flocks

the whole world over,
a dominant breed.

But looking at streets
in downtown Toronto—

the alien maples
anchored in concrete,

the snow that covers
one fourth of the year—

part of you lifts
at the thought of the Old World,

then circles

                           and circles

with no place to land.

Poem 1 | Poem 2 | Poem 3 | Poem 4 | Poem 5 | Poem 6

Kevin Irie's works copyright © to the author.