Refuge

Bird fell, cussed from its nest –
say the wind or batting pride,
an attempt & leap
and then ground.

I am enormous,
but helpless to its sound
of urgent mortars
enveloping, like hail.

I hold it, fuzzed cluster –
gaze at its converted fate.
This is how you return

the war-gone: don’t let them
pain into stillness.  I think, small
Christ skin, think little
fleeing heaven.

Carlo André is a Hispanic-American poet and Iraq war veteran living in Florida, who writes poetry as a form of frustrating therapy and as a reaching out for the world unknown that sometimes language provides.