With Each Bird Flying, Time Is Passing

Candled horses run across the dining table

I cannot take a bite before them

I cannot ride their passion

One child pulls herself onto my knee

The other is wrapping my arms to my sides with a scarf

If I can’t be a bird neither can you

he laughs, and the first child cries

For each life there is another you can’t have

It could have been better

I could have been generous

When the horses are gone and everyone’s fed

the unflown life comes

                                                       flying

I fall madly in love with mine

Elizabeth Metzger is the author of Lying In and The Spirit Papers, winner of the Juniper Prize for Poetry. She is a poetry editor at The Los Angeles Review of Books.
Originally published:
June 12, 2023

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