Bird Poem
It always begins with a dumb little bird:
Keats under plums, Whitman on the beach,
Williams at his window eyeing trees, the sun
rising a minute later than yesterday; I wake up,
read mail, pay bills, raw sleep still gummed
to lashes, bits I rub loose by noon: to conjure
the fragile thing, to have it drown all over
again in the swimming pool, to be ten years old
and recognize the opportunity to correct nature
on this one, to relieve the flapping body from
a carefully choreographed dance to death, before I
learn that all things move in this way, creatures
mangled red through a shatterable verse
with meanings they did not ask for. I look up.
I pull open the sliding door. Colored suncatchers
cling against glass. I open the gate. I maneuver
the net, and it is heavy. I dip the net in water,
lift the bird onto warm concrete. The animal heaves
like a heart. I wrap the bird in Bounty paper towels,
leave a piece of Wonderbread. ‘Bird’ has no
etymology, but I am saying: I use the word, as if
for a first time—bird: an unnoticed shift of pole
stars—bird: the pine needles fall away from the
bristlecone—bird: to disappear, one by one,
like the winged animal beating air behind and
underneath, leaving its bathing flock for a nest hidden
in a lunar plain called Solitude, away from the pond
where my young grandfather dips his fishing
line, my small mother’s white blonde giving light
back to the sun as she wanders off, holding one doll
in a way I can’t remember—bird: whose rictus mouth
runs over these words, whose hands run blearily
over my body to check whether I’m still
here, and not there, where the old neighbor’s cat
leaves in the backyard wet feathers and misplaced
bones, like children’s toys scattered
in the street with no one to use them—
bird: are you still here because I’m not, the
infinitesimal heart of the universe bursting apart
in all directions, an unsettled divergence.