Heart and bird, Gerard Manleyed metaphored--
the systolic, diastolic of their flight,

the wingbeat and song they mate

for life, the red they surface at the crest
and cut of menace, the feathering of the nest

they weave forever. To never migrate
to the other side of me, to outwit
winter's crumbs and weather, solsticed,

diasolsticed--their summer's bleed
and gather, togethering in clot, unclot
upon the snows, the mindscrape's mundane dead--

they are solar to the dark plexus of my need,

ventricle to life's central-and-left-side,

critical intravenous bright wings of the world.