Bird Ephemera

the canned fruit bursts it is

frozen solid

so long the sound is

quieter than it ought

to be quiet as the birdless

tree of ice that bore

the peaches there is no mess

there ought to be

I hear of worse a woman

bedridden her legs

her feet freeze

blacken a quiet wither

this begins as penciled observation

sometimes words a birdcall heard

sometimes an outline eye-

draft a drawing in greater detail if an

hour opens

its frozen gate map

of the bird primaries

coverts secondaries lore

the pages begin to fill I

carry it everywhere

in an apron pocket

to the field the spring

a gully the base of a tree

a map a chart

anatomy tarsus I think

of this eyestripe

when he is on me

in this the record

of what winters

over survives

with us thrasher

hermit thrush what

leaves what leaves

the field is the same here

as what leaves the eye

if I have this evidence

of a bird recorded

nuthatch waxwing there is

evidence of me

what I don’t say here

is not

and all is not what it

seems muscle

memory of fire and iron-laden water

the new

baby much

like any other

the confinement the same same

trunk lid

its cradle

the man the way he worries

a stump out

of the ground the way

he rocks it cradling

loose tooth the way he fails

the same gives up folds his hands

in his lap for now

the spine goes brittle the glue

turns to sand sprig

of fern dried in the pages

brittle comb fragile

teeth sky-slight shadow

remains the failing

of all color

a shadow is the same

as a cave my twin

brother died before I

drew a breath I have

to cut one

of my dresses into two

for the girls

I had expected the one

to die before winter

not to learn to tell one

apart from the other

I cannot bear

another child another

winter another year

another unimaginable

the enemies of the bird

man the elements

accident other anomalies

birds of prey snakes

my own the same

the butcher bird

impales smaller birds

snakes and moles impales them

on barbwire and thorns

the weapon of this world

a tent consumptive

on the grounds of the hospital

a lung collapsing collapsing

light a pole sunk

straight through the middle

of the air

the neighbor’s baby dies

again a day

drags its length a cowbell

drags its sound

no it is wind

the hem of this

dress dragging the ground

miscarriage I will call it

suicide I drank what I had

heard a tincture tansy cohosh

pennyroyal primrose

mistletoe what had hung

from a lintel at Christmastime

and still it clung

only to die at its birth

limp infant dead word

on a pillowslip stained with it

a wren in the tent it enters

easy as air moving easy

as grief

it eats from my hand it mistakes

my hair for the stuff

of a nest lichen from a boulder

spider’s web hornet’s nest

for the nest itself

I wave it away it returns

unafraid as though

I am not altogether me

something made from the elsewhere

a thing to dissemble

on the water shelf

by the bucket

a nest lined

with lichen stolen

remolded in it

a shell halved blue

thimble needleless eye

the blind horse we can

afford the blindness we

afford all that doesn’t

need to see this staggering

passage of ground

lace a remnant of curtain

for a bookmark a text

of bird and vine saved

for this recollection

of a window a warbled

pane of glass now

this slip of a passage

a child lives long enough

to slip fixed into a name

scarlet fever closing it closing

the throat he tells me some other

house I’m gonna go to some

other house what other

house has he ever been to

his brow smoothed then some

other hand smoothing it

the kittens die

all and still she looks

for them calls swollen

for them she is not

this she is cat animal-

all whose young survive

her have long forgotten

her when she bellies

under the house to die

having forgotten them all

summer the burning

of sedge grass the cough

the wind weaving a shroud

melancholia the moss

on the stones in the springhouse

burning I turn the children

out naked into the woods

the humid understory thicket

of switches I am never more

than three meals from the nothing

I tell them there is I finish

the last biscuit

watch it disappear

with them

this this a hymn

of shadow it is here my own

translation hurry

hurry a lexicon finished

betrothal was ever this the weld

are you weary the rent

illusion that hour

this one when the thrush

can insist it is

not real and will it is not real

barred owls unseen

caterwaul vesper

sparrows chimney

swifts crisscross intricate

etching of afterimage

their delight in emptying the sky

emptying the eye mine

in the dooryard the swept it is not

real elegance of a finished thing