The Ostrich Fether

Anubis the jackal floats over the ocean in a cyclone’s eye,

awaiting the dead. Smoke ferries them upward,

bodies spiraling through rain bands.

In the eye’s blue calm, Anubis readies the scale

to weigh each heart against the ostrich

feather of truth, a symmetry of barb and vane.

Tyrants relied on the lie that the ostrich

buries its head in the sand.

Having seen everything, the ostrich has outrun

the fleeting nature of falsehood.

The globe of its eye sees inside the tyrant.

In the Hall of Two Truths, Anubis takes a heart from a glass.

Only souls lighter than the feather

may pass into paradise. Heavier souls sink.

The ostrich clicks its bill as the poet-monks build taller stanzas

to hear from afar

the disappeared birds that sing

to the children of fire and war,

hungry in their living throats.

Heather H. Thomas, 3.13.2025