Hanger

I walked into my bedroom to see a raven
leaving through the open window with a coathanger in his beak.
Somewhere baby robins crouched motionless at the bottom
of a tree hollow.

I found down, black and lustreless, scattered about the floor.
The baby robins were featherless and blind.

On the floor of my open closet was one tail pinion,
gleaming violet over black, shaped precisely as a knife.
The tiny claws of the hatchlings were sharp as needles
and their beaks gaped with hunger when the parents were near.

But the bird that approaches the nest now is not a robin
and the hooked shadow of a coathanger dips over the nest
like the shadow of a sword, a noose.
The baby birds are still.
I can hear no sound.

Available! High-Voltage Lines, Knocking from Inside