Feather poem

The things you value most, bird,
About your soapbubble-coloured feather:
Don't interest us at all.

The plumes for lift, the lovely hues,
The warmth, the courtship bulk.
These are superfluous.

We want the spine only;
The plastic rigid capillary.
A part you barely knew you had.

We want this not for its fine contents,
Your lifeblood, flowing.
We want it wrenched out, emptied,

the red replaced with airless black,
a double nick to bring the socket point
To a writer's lancet arch

So as to write nightingales,
And crows, sometimes; but mostly
To write humans, and human sensitivities.