City next to a dam

I did not give up

this spot on a dam that acts

as a grey shoulder to a round-head city.

At dawn, the head tilts 

and empties its lungs of sighs.

I'm a non-migrating bird

preening wings, molting in a small pile.

I'm the overseer of a manmade slab

that chokes out electricity to two-room houses

in the bedroom community of machine metropolis.

The city is filled with naked trees

and people that move likes cells

that nourish something larger

than an organ. Maybe the lower half

of a body or the whole body,

keeping a sick body alive with slugging cars,

red cell cars that fight black illness

and the rub the sleep from your eyes.

I sit on the dam,

feet tucked and wings primed to fly,

feathers piled to my breast 

watching the streams of water

colored the same as dirty sky

flow away from each other.

One towards a sighing city,

the other to nourish a coughing,

vulnerable man.