FEATHER

Feathers

all her life, they had been saving down
to make her wedding feather bed

to celebrate the birth,
grandmother killed a goose
and brought the carcase, warm,
to where her daughter lay

a mother makes the first gift

weakly wrenched out of the body
the first feather was bound
inside a square of silk, red,
with wormwood, thyme, and rue

the bundle, smaller than a baby’s fist,
soaked by the fire, in bees’ wax
until the baby had a name

from that day, for a hundred days
they melted crimson wax, dipped
the feather once, and let it harden

honey-scented, it still waited
feather herbs and silk
under bushel bags of down

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