Mantis 22 (Summer 2024)
Disillusion; Dissolution
Helen Steenhuis
Bird without Flight
I lost my voice when I saw the bird on the road,
its wings shattered, a mast with no sail.
The sky was a pool ruffled and vacant, sunless and vast.
It lay quivering, a ball of loosened feathers
stirring under a tepid wind that swept down
to turn the bird onto its side.
There was a flicker, a longing to take flight,
the instinct to move, to go anywhere,
directionless, silently resolute,
to be lifted above the gravelled road.
When will the voice come back
and what will it say —
I have seen the tragedy of the bird without flight.
HELEN STEENHUIS, originally from Atlanta, Georgia, has been living in France near Aix-en-Provence for 35 years. She is an English language teacher, raises chickens, and swims in the Mediterranean year long. Her work has appeared in the French Literary Review, Equinox, The Poetry Library, and Cumberland River Review. Recent poems are forthcoming in Amethyst Review, and Kitchen Table Quarterly.