Now I have the Great Crested Flycatcher
amidst my Red Delicious, the tree’s
spindly arm so freighted with apples
it sags under the bird’s bird-weight
then springs at his departure
like the board just after a diver’s flung up
and gone. Weep weep weep, he trills
from the overgrown fence row,
his three notes so laden with gravity
I wonder is this song or his lament,
one wing among the green going going?
And that, my friends, is how reason
insinuates its bone lonely self
among the arts of joy- the least of which
is knowing when to snip the string
that tethers us, our sky blue why.
The bird’s after-image is more than
I can take, really, more than I can ask
of Wednesday’s usual desultory coffers,
high noon offering its unspent zenith.
I want to say there’s absolutely nothing
like this vision of bird and apples. I want
to say absolutely nothing else gives
of wings and fruit. Then I think of
nights my wife rose flushed above me —
this, the only store I put in absolutes.
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