Soul Cages

What are skulls but pigeon coops,
Way stations, and soul cages
To us who come and leave them?

What leaves is never what came.
What arrives may disappear,
Whether it moves on or not.

Strange hotels you are. What if
You transmitted through the years
The way we move on through you?

You arrive at the station
You’ll never leave as yourself.
You may take up residence.

You may vanish in an hour.
You may live to watch yourself,
Cloned with more or less success,

Sometimes deliberately
Altered, often half-decayed,
Leave into the empty wind,

You, yourself, not as you were,
Not you, but maybe almost,
Maybe to reach another

Station, another hotel,
To lodge there making copies,
More cloned and variant selves,

Some to perish, some to flee,
Some like us who mostly twirl
Like leaves in your forest skull.