William Palmer

A Sound Like a Clang of Sheet Metal

Is it coming from outside the house?
It stops.

That night it starts again—inside the fireplace.
Then stops.

A flashlight shows gray tail feathers
just above a glass door.

I think of the painting
The Ascension of Christ:
his lower legs
and pierced feet
rising toward the top
of the frame
as the apostles and Virgin Mary
look up.

The next morning—dried pale streams
on the doors, like milk.

I open and shut them hard.

It’s gone.

*

When my son calls to tell me
he’d be better off
back in prison,
I tell him about the bird
in the fireplace.

He says, I’m not a goddamn bird.

William Palmer’s poetry has appeared in Ecotone, I-70 Review, JAMA, One Art, Salamander and elsewhere. A retired professor of English at Alma College, he lives in Traverse City, Michigan.