Dead Heron

You ve been here a while now.
Your skin, burnt black
and sagging, stretched and bursting holes,
belies the length of your repose.

Your feathers over there
are strewn away from your cadaver,
so twisted and abnormal,
but so quietly asleep.

Though death is here,
a city lives within you.

Hard to figure where
you firstly lay your head,
weary
as you huddled down to die

but a seashell
buried deep within your ribcage
imparts the fact, you chose a
sand shell shore goodbye.

You could
be just a dead bird

and yes,
just as the breeze
bursts back
a heavy reek comes from your cavities

yet deep within the walls
of your old leather,
families of larvae break their banks
and eat away remainders of your shanks.

An oh-so-barely visible eruption
can be seen in the recesses of your chest
and all along your beak
are queues of busy ants
dismantling your mane for a queen's nest.

Still and quiet you sleep.
Your eyes so softly shut
you cannot weep.
There is no need.

You have provided life here,
filled with colonies of the new.
Prometheus would have been so
proud of you

for somehow I can see
that all is stirring
within the fetid belly
of a still
and long-dead heron.