Betsy Wheeler Non-Sonnet for a Ruffled Bird About me the weather knows nothing at all. I am regal in the gale, hunkered down, un- affected by the winch-head's stormy method. Yeah, I hold myself together pretty well. Ask me and I'll tell you I'm all about collecting. This fire in my palms, for instance, is amazing in its tender and neurotic burning. I admit that what I'm afraid of has a higher potency: the possibility that my body could hurl me, without asking, over an eighteen-story railing and would my hands grapple for a toe-hold? Would the wind, oblivious and busy anyway, take note and sweep me back up? I have no comeuppance for the storm, reactionary or otherwise. I have no nest to build. Imminent rain, carry me slippery inside your mother cloud or let me burn in flight. Betsy Wheeler lives in Lewisburg, PA, where she holds the Stadler Fellowship at Bucknell University's Stadler Center for Poetry. Her poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Bedside Guide to No Tell Motel, Octopus, Brooklyn Review, GutCult, Can We Have Our Ball Back, and elsewhere. She is co-editor of FlatCity Press.