feather windmill

i have begun replacing whatever i can with
chicken feathers. the flock is molting 
& i have a harvest in every brush. i love
to hold the plumage up to the light 
& read them like film negatives. in my dead aunt's
house we found all sorts of feathers.
it was like in the last years of life she was trying
to fly. i did not visit enough. i did not 
call enough. instead i made postage stamps
of our childhood. held a mirror up to 
a wonky moon. i collected her feathers & they
turned into film negatives. pictures of 
all the family on the beach without faces.
i could have asked what the river meant to her.
my goal is to live in a feather house which is
to say i want to see a stop motion life. as a kid
i made my own clay-mation films. the sun
always moved in the background like a sulking daughter.
i moved feathers. flew to heaven & saw nothing
but billboards. i don't know what my aunt
thought of me. i think i was a toy boat
in a different river. still, in the summer, we used
to stand in the yard & play lawn darts. 
sometimes, if the year was right, one of the aunts
would fly. only i ever saw them. they would reach
the top of the pear tree to pluck one, soft & ripe. 
i ate a fruit only once in all the years i lived there. 
it turned into feathers in my hands so i tried
to eat as fast as i could. the past is always trying
to become a bird. i wrap us in it. keep out the cold.
the chickens admire each other's photographs.
in the blur of the morning the rooster calls out
to wake up the sun. a big camera on the horizon.
my aunt slept for the last year of her life
in the big sleepy armchair. birds filled the house. 
doves & sparrows. photographs in the closet
beating their wings to pieces.