Magpie

She works her fingers into an old stump,
 down to the soft splinters, the harmless pricks
 that goad no more, that turn to pulp beneath
 persuasive hands.
                                        She runs her fingers over
 a stone, dwells on its round perfection, long
 in birth and long in death, a moment etched
 on a compendium of etchings.
                                                             She rakes
 her fingers through a fire’s corpse, ashes
 bending to her figurations, lines
 that speak her whim, furrows in gray that shade
 her whorls.
                           She does not own these dreams. They cackle
 across her synapses as she, echo
 of their cacchination, rises, leaves—
 a flash of white and black caught hazily
 through branches flush with needles. Thick, the air.
 Breathe in. Again, more deeply. Smells like rain.

– Aaron Novick

About the author of this poem

Aaron Novick is an assistant professor of philosophy at Purdue University. His poetry has appeared in Notre Dame Review, The American Journal of Poetry, Dunes Review, and elsewhere. He tweets as @AmneMachin