Sonnet for a Cockateel

From the ad interim stability

Of just being weightless underwater

I glimpsed the undulating form of mother

Come to subtract me from my camaraderie.

Her tideless ebb and flow bore peremptory

Guilt (that look in her eye that my father

Always spotted as something the matter):

My lawyer with no good news from the jury.

I rose my head above the muted purl

And breathed, pulled to the deck by heavy hands

That never could warm me, even when I

Stood wrapped and toweled in her lee. Unfurled

And resonating, the news came to land

And landed softer than the bird had died.