Poetry by Allison Collins

       Sarah Horrigan CC




Starling 

I dream of waking alone,
winging out over the unmade bed,
adrift and drifting, 
to wonder what it might be like 
to be less needed,
to not feel the sharp-beaked call 
of all of you, wanting, wanting.

At a certain age, I began to understand 
what Virginia meant about money 
and a room of one’s own.
 
We had a starling in the woodstove, once:
its jewel-neck soot-stained 
and frantic.
The sound of passerine claws on bellied cast iron 
and walled-in wings,
lives, still, in my head,
if not the chimney pipe.
 
It took all of us 
wielding upturned laundry baskets like baseball mitts 
and sheets, wide-winged and jumpy, 
staged around stairs and doors, 
to shunt her back out.

We had to work so hard to free a thing 
that had, really, trapped herself. 

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Allison Collins is editor of Upstate Life Magazine and a writer with The Daily Star and Kaatskill Life Magazine. Her work has been published in online and print journals.