Where once music, now noise. I mean to sing against the roar of it, to find the others to recover a refrain from memory. To call and call in aria, unceasing, I do––but for today, only shelter. Only weep.
to bird us
some return in music
Tag: bird
mother to feather
a music lesson
little bird wait
as long as you need
to offer
your opening notes
and when you hear them
come true, sing
as loud as you
can
count them
with bird
What after that wind flies? There goes one harpy. Now another. Repeat. They fall back later, to resume the docile pose of downy chicks in hand, two at a time.
After, one wonders. What this means if you consider the ratio of handheld bird to idea of those remaining in the bush? Look around then, sense a feather of presence. But now is one of those times when counting will not hold so maybe later but who knows. Was now always so hard to number–– or ever?
o bird
o feather
o breath
o time
hold me like the one about to fly
like found feather after bird gone
like opening notes of song almost
remembered.
long wave
before wintering
when i knew time like bird & myself
as blading grass but without a word
for the wide green weft of my sun catching
in full sway before i thought to ask what
after sun gone i would make
grails
amid ongoing hush
we shared real questions in imagined time
meaning everything we made there was
unfinished & blood is no fiction it learns
drop by unsparing bird through intractable
dawns singing feathers shrunk to fit tongues
to then expand to swallow us whole into
carrying we carry on like this & sing
chattering
chill
Go forth, love,
follow the bird
that flies from
you into night
so dark it trains
the eyes to watch
for what shimmers
over dirt under rain.
feather
of lead
Bird, sing into this place for the weight of what remains, for I mean to shelter what may not be saved.
where will
how, singing?
Hello, bird. Without your forest, you sing a loop from a wire. From where I stand, your presence is a nagging question. Where to live now. How?
Transience
After space
First was displacement across a hollowing, echoing earth. Then came the longing of the rest of us, still here. The ache to know a place. Meanwhile, we remain tethered to one or another edge but mostly floating, trying to listen to the remaining birds. Who seem sometimes to suggest a song to somewhere.
one day, birds
arriving to address the assembly
i can’t believe this, you say again,
& keep on. as though to sing
that song of yours in strange words
we do not know. despite myself
you say––
[or in spite of?]
[to spite. the blast]
against scattering & by way of explanation
of why you ––anything. we are skeptics
of this logic & think you are creatures
who do not know what you are
perhaps because you insist on asking
what is this & why
[scatter. return]
we think maybe this is your only song
we think you want help with the singing.
we have seen you watching so we came
for we are the ones who come & go.