High, bright winter’s morning: the tenements’ bare tree-antlers clattering
on each corner and the stepping black spines smooth and glossy
as mirages; framed, the scene shines as if transported to a desert, and never
(since this winter day will not end hereafter, having left the field of time) will the trees
rattle leaves again or carry broods of flowers; but still, as in a desert,
a random bird alights, hoarse-throated after days of luckless questing
for a moth or a spider that has cellared spring rains in its body, so honeying
the juices of itself; and when startled by a boy skating down the lane a moment,
she is swallowed by the wind, as a rasping draws nearer on the dirt and turns articulate,
becomes the shuck, shuck of a snake tasting engine oil and frost as if astonished
how far it has gone across terrains when last it knew an iridescence
meant the felled wing of a hummingbird, and thus the sweetest
meat, but never such a black stench as pools below this metal corpse ...
High, bright winter’s morning: the desert wind whistling from the north,
radio static from the kitchen clarifying to the small maracas rattle of the sand,
briefly clambering with every wave of air: go, stop; go, stop; and then, a long silence —
(as if entire days have held their breath). Now comes a human voice: low, soft,
perhaps yours, rising like the yam tendril, which knows how to bind whatever’s still,
and for long enough to touch.