The infant Jesus to his mother

I watched you pick up a feather
out the back, beyond the shed.
You smiled at it then hid it
in your pocket with the others.

You touch their smoothness under cover.
You think i do not notice.
My father says your stillness scares him
when you seem to turn to stone
and sit staring at the air.
He wants to ask what's wrong with you
but you are lost to your imagining,
not hearing him but listening
for Heaven's whisper at your ear,
a thunder of wings in the room. 

Published in Even the Daybreak - 35 years of Salmon poetry (Salmon Poetry 2016)