Michelle Menting

Osteopenia or Upon Learning You Have Bird Bones

You wonder how porous, if they're pocked
like pumice. Do they just look like bone,

like bleached rock but light: your skeleton
a stale sponge, it can snap so simply

like coral on a beach? Are your fingers
& toes linked like stencils connected 

in place: just letters—all caps or cursive—
made of papyrus? Like airplanes

of paper: shapes no longer serving 
designated purpose (to hold up, to solidify—

stature like statue). But oh, what promise, 
to be able to fly. A loon weighs ten pounds, 

her wings span five feet, and she spends 
most her life on bodies of water, cresting 

cradled waves, plunging into depths
a Giant Sequoia’s height. Solid 

are her bones. To be like that. For this lift
your new lightness allows you into air

intrigues you less than that ability to dive,
to resist a surface that just reflects the sky.

Michelle Menting's most recent poems, flash essays, and stories appear or are expected in Cincinnati Review, Passages North, EcoTheo Review, About Place Journal, SWWIM, Tar River Poetry, Rise Up Review, and other places. She lives in rural Maine.