Stone weighting my palm
has sprung a cathedral

heart jumps
walking in the flesh of its surpassing grace
groin-vaulted and high as

no bird ever escaped to soar this
high-up—
seamless and

there is no blood
no feather
no bone—

stone cannot make the bird.

© C. Murray

• A version of Precarious Migratory Spectacular  by C. Murray is one of two poems published recently in the Galway Review. This poem was collected in Cycles at Lapwing Publications (2013)