Migrations
for Jami Xu
You send me poems and I cup
them in my hands build a nest lined with
moss and feathers with moist clay with
down plucked from my own body. Poems
move on fan-tipped wings on thermals of
human breath they navigate hemispheres
migrate between massed skyscrapers
through clouds of cement dust over
jade green rice fields.
Their cries are lost cries first forlorn
then harsh then sweetening dawn’s
guava-tinted light. They fly over new cities
showing their young the way teaching the
future about themselves flocking over
excavated mountains flying with split
minds half-asleep half-awake always
to and away from home.
Graham Mort is Professor of Creative Writing and Transcultural Literature at Lancaster University. His latest book of poems, Black Shiver Moss, was published by Seren in 2017.