From the ledge of my cell window last night
Pero the dreamhawk took two avocados
I had set there for him. It was a bargain,
but it isn’t clear what I received in return.
Pero is masterful. It is rumored
he will slash a person’s forearm for no reason.
I believe this. I have seen his eye in sunlight.
It is like no other dream in the kingdom-
a talon, an archangel of a lost art.
After he took the avocados, after
they disappeared from the sill, my window
eased open even farther, seemed to drift
away and become air, to become the voice
of a poet who had not spoken with clarity
to himself for a long time. I imagined it
inherent in the air, but of this other
substance, also transparent, yet chilled,
brittle, intransigent. It would need to be broken
many times before it would be fine enough
to be indistinguishable from the air it sings.
To be faithful in a few things.
To be thankful for small favors.
To be undone by the unlikely, the modest.
To be alien in the garden, to look up.
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