All day those birds, the nurses

flutter in their blue plumage.
He stares through the window

at a swatch of heaven,
sees the neat white

stitches of a jet.
Something flickers

in the corner of his eye:
a feather, buoyed by a cobweb

outside the glass,
buoyant on the currents

of the air.
He understands

why the feather moves,
how a spider’s net

has ensnared it
as he has understood

from the surgeon
that it will take six weeks

moored by the ballast of traction,
until the unhinged wing

of his pelvis heals.
All day he hears birds

praising the sky
until dusk

when sparrows scatter
their crumbs of song

and the nurse completes
the diurnal graph

of his vital signs
like the curves and dips

of a swallow–
the closest he’ll get

to flying.