Immensity is the extra wings 
grafted to his breast and back. 
The way they sprout shapes him 
into a grotesque and pinioned star. 
He lumbers through a forest of stumps. 
His weight grants purchase on the dearth. 


II 
Reaching the sky requires him to desire absence. 
To imagine his familiar and deforming burdens –  
his hollow limbs shuddering as his weak heart pumps 
blood to his massive, clumsy and indolent extremities. 
He scrutinizes his blunt beak, looks over one shoulder 
after another. Tries to pluck his feathers again. Stoops.
 
III 
It would take a guilty axe / to release him / from the ground.