The Thing I Will Not Speak of In a Poem

This is not a poem with a secret

or a secret poem.

That summer, I returned home

and found a starling trapped

in the living room.

Her soot-black wings

batted the floral wallpaper,

her panicked breast

greased the windows,

she shit-splattered

the carriage clock

and ship-in-a-bottle

on the mantlepiece

before I wrapped her

in a fitted sheet.

She flew back

against the glass,

thudded to a bed

of loosened render.

In the cold grate,

a broken hatchling,

its tiny head cocked

as though watching.

I told my sister

who told our social worker, who

doodled a tree on the cover of her folder.

Morag Anderson