Below the Night Sky and Blazing

My bones hollow, but I don’t grow feathers
like a good bird.

The village torches mark the trails
from the foothills into the rows of shops,
onto the box-heavy-delivery-truck-filled roads,
the scabs of progress flicker under the headlights.

The city’s rites stitched to the self’s ideas
of ownership turn into a living canvas
painted with screens and tax
and I’d rather be a finch in a tree.

But maybe understanding
is watching shadows
as if they were words.