Caxton by Noli Adrian de Pedro

Caxton
(from the collection, Poems for Leticia)

See this is what I tried to do:
I caught all the birds I have ever seen,
or never imagined or could not imagine,
and put them all in a cage devised
to fit the roof of your hands. Each of them
was put into a calm, folded-down secret,
bones and colored feathers, all posed carefully
for the image of beautiful flights, for
a live and silent world happy with its fiction.
This aviary that I wanted you to have
is in itself a bird with no flight.
Its wings stunned purposefully.
It is a Caxton tamed, patient for
the pleasure of your eyes and fingers.
I taught it to teach you of flight.



-This poem is from the latest Malate Literary Folio that Ryan gave to me last Tuesday. (Ryan is from La Salle :) It won 3rd place in the 21st DLSU Lit Awards which a co-Heightser, Mookie Katigbak, judged. I edited it a bit. Otherwise, I think it's lovely and reminiscent of Jeline De Dios' and Jeanie Nieva's poetry.Caxton, by the way, is an English publisher who printed the first book in English in 1474.