Inhaling the sky by David Hanlon

Inhaling the sky by David Hanlon

Battered, weary-bodied,
toothpick bones, clipped wings,
alarm, flapping,
unceasing mind-chatter:
swarm-buzz, anxious bees;
fist pummel,
collapsing into a ruinous truth.

Did I rattle for decades in a prison of my own making?

A moulting of the internalised--
stone is fruit, a forgotten heap
on my own flesh prison’s floor;

a cage within my cage,
vessels for breath, vessels: blood flow.

Metal bars pried open, screeching,
wings prized from steel captivity, 
spreading albatross-wide.

I breathe in the unobscured; this celestial dome above me.

My deep chest is an atmosphere,
mapping out constellations and flare
swells.

My thorax a repository, a 
showcase for spectacles, a
natural phenomena.

The sky is an open wound,
church, its organ,
trauma talons,
an unbarred echo,

its flight, the kindest weapon.

​

This poem originally appeared in Spectrum of Flight, Animal Hearts Press, 2020.

David Hanlon is a Welsh poet living in Bristol, England. He is a qualified counsellor/therapist. You can find his work online in Rust & Moth, Into The Void, Barren Magazine, Mojave Heart Review, Kissing Dynamite & Homology Lit, among others. His first chapbook is forthcoming in Spring 2020 with Animal Heart Press.