“Triptych Window” — C.Birde, 11/18

A cloak of feathers.

Tier upon tier – swan and goose and snowy owl.

It floats gently about the form;

delicately, restlessly skims shoulders, limbs, and torso.

White as the moonlight gathered

from that heavenly body adrift in the night sky.

Aglow, each feather gleams and shimmers in the otherwise darkened room.

A room of gray stone – heavy with antiquity – arranged to form a turret;

to form, on its exterior curve, a large bay of triptych windows.

Decorated with scrolling grillwork, each of that trio stretches upward

toward the ceiling’s inverted, conical peak.

Undressed, the windows beg the moonlight’s entry,

plead,

invite,

as if that tide of light could be denied.

Feathers — silver-limned, separate and together.

The satin-clad bed at the room’s center — softly aglow.

The seam of light that leaks past the bathroom door’s blunt rectangular face —

challenged.

Voices beyond that door…

No.

Ignore them.

Do not heed their whispering; their arguing, incessant hiss.

Do not listen or be distracted.

Return to the triptych window, to its stone seat and summons.

Rest upon its cushions – crushed velvet, indigo blue;

Sit, clad in feathers and moonlight,

beside the pair of over-sized and venerable gray rabbits.

Stroke the rabbits’ soft fur, until one hops down, away,

ducks to hide beneath the bed’s satin skirt.

Peer out the window, out into the darkling night

from within the turret’s giddy height.

Over silvered, grassy lawns so far below.

Past the castle’s humped and shadowed torso

to the turret opposite, twin to this.

See there?

Those triptych windows, lit to glowing beyond parted scarlet drapes?

Someone moves within that other room.

Bathed in brimming, golden light —

another soul.

— C.Birde, 11/18