Whittle Edges of teapots and fruit dishes made presentable. I mothered bluebirds from lifeless liquid. From cast moulds cream necks stemmed, a wing, two eyes, clay skeletons firing in the kiln. Many would fold, cleft beaks, bubbles in the spine, children I buried with the wastage. Some lived to be glazed in a frost-blue coat. I fettle, work words. Shaving, replacing, whittling away at the bone, back-bent. I peel the bark of tree stumps, thread smoke through the needle eye. Picking wild oats with dirt tracks on my palms I weed the changes in me, out. The moth floating dead in the glass like a star, a golden cross when the sun comes. Some lines leap, some die, lungs full of ink. But here I place the bluebird, a solitary tack on a cork board, and its wings flutter a little between blinks. It whispers will you remember me tomorrow? I ask the same of my flock of broken loves, blueprints stained with coffee and dust. These are the measurements, incisions. These are beginnings and ends, stacked lines, trimmings of trying.