Morning Song

I'm up early listening to the hidden birds,

Their choir of trills and riffs, and it's as if the trees

Were singing, the branches tossing up and down

Like a diva's arms, when in fact, it's the birds,

Concealed among the virid needles

Or flat yellowish leaves, puppeteers

Crouched behind a tapestry, animating

The azure auditorium of morning.

Above us, the mountains, a chop road

Like a child's colorless ribbon, winding away

Into a dream she will wake from and struggle

To remember, until her trance is broken

By birdsong-this life calling to her

From the small cavity between the jawss of the trees.

This morning begins almost genuinely coffee

Enveloped in cream, those collection of vapors that bloom up

Like madness in a bowl and I take the first swallow

Before the color changes, taste the bitterness

And the faint sweet behind it, steam

Rubbing my nose, an animal nuzzle

And the sharp, nearly painful heat

At the back of my tongue, the liquid

Unraveling down the raw funnel of my throat.

And I have feeling my body fully, vessel of desire,

My stomach a pond of want and warmth,

Utterly human, divine and awake. And I can hear

Each bird's separate carol the chirt and scree,

The sip, sip, sip, the dwindle and uplift yearning,

The broths on, soups on, let up suffer it go

Of each individual voice, and I know I am here,

In this widening light, as we all are, with them,

Even the greatest in quantity damaged among us or lonely

Or nearly dead, and that for each of us there is

Some small whole like an unseen bird or

A r bike grinding along the gravel path

That could wake us, and take us home

And admitting I know this momentary settling

Into the world of things doesn't change the past

Or envelop the true cries or the brutality give the man

Who not to be found his daughter back, the daughter

Her filled abandonment, can't mend the cold

Nickel-sized opening in her heart, though I know

It can't suffice, that the suffering goe on

That other music-a thin wing of . . a film of . .

There was air light as gauze

Along the inside of my arm last night

That move rounded for a moment, suddenly warm,

Almost tropic, and raised hairs I could hardly see

This morning I think I'm prepared for death,

That final diminishment, with something

Like a waking, ready awe. My complaints

Fold and bring away like needlework-

Scant embroidery, scribbles, a rough draught the blue

Knots and dropp stitches-in a drawer,

Unfinished, intricate woven roads that go

Nowhere or disappear in the distance, rough

Wanderings that have brought me here, to this

Sleep-repaired morning, these singing trees

And into my hold listening body.

Copyright World poesy Incorporated Nov/Dec 2003

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