Untethered

by Melanie Cunningham

Our collars, iridescent violet-green

Shimmer an oily slick of feather ends

Over our scraggy chests.

Warily dart-eyed we serve ourselves

The Willowpattern crumbs from afternoon tea-time.

Presently, distracted teadrinkers are summoned inside;

Day-end heralded by a creeping chill

Which presses toward the indoors,

Which pulls toward time and order

and rules over leaf-dappled ramblings.

 A shooing of garden-soiled hands,

The clatter of saucers and we depart.

But we

Our iridescent livery

And sharpsprung sqwarking protestations

bind us to no master.

Exercise - Take the last and second-last lines of this poem, and write a poem that could fit between them. Poem - Andy Quan's 'A word from  the feral pigeon'.