Buyers market

(i)

Bylines ring hollow. Strike a match,

it could not light darkness at the marrow

where dreams sputter out with the loss of a Sparrow

who might have flown higher on wings of his own.

(ii)

Three wraps left to sell in Januarys bonebite hail

his clothes no longer dripped, conjoined with Winter,

crystallised in a dirty yellow glaze; an unforgiving tale.

Fingers, swollen as if long drowned, fumble with polythene

eyes pleading for another mark; only three wraps left.

 (iii)

 Blue-black, blue-black a wail of loss

louder than approach of sirens.

You and I will never know the beat of that small

feathered breast floating on the styx.