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When I see birches bend to left and right Across the lines of straighter darker trees, I like to think some boy's been swinging them. But swinging doesn't bend them down to stay As ice-storms do. Often you must have seen them Loaded with ice a sunny winter morning After a rain. They click upon themselves As the breeze rises, and turn many-colored As the stir cracks and crazes their enamel. Soon the sun's warmth makes them shed crystal shells Shattering and avalanching on the snow-crust— Such heaps of broken glass to sweep away You'd think the inner dome of heaven had fallen. They are dragged to the withered bracken by the load, And they seem not to break; though once they are bowed So low for long, they never right themselves: You may see their trunks arching in the woods Years afterwards, trailing their leaves on the ground Like girls on hands and knees that throw their hair Before them over their heads to dry in the sun. But I was going to say when Truth broke in With all her matter-of-fact about the ice-storm I should prefer to have some boy bend them As he went out and in to fetch the cows— Some boy too far from town to learn baseball, Whose only play was what he found himself, Summer or winter, and could play alone. One by one he subdued his father's trees By riding them down over and over again Until he took the stiffness out of them, And not one but hung limp, not one was left For him to conquer. He learned all there was To learn about not launching out too soon And so not carrying the tree away Clear to the ground. He always kept his poise To the top branches, climbing carefully With the same pains you use to fill a cup Up to the brim, and even above the brim. Then he flung outward, feet first, with a swish, Kicking his way down through the air to the ground. So was I once myself a swinger of birches. And so I dream of going back to be. It's when I'm weary of considerations, And life is too much like a pathless wood Where your face burns and tickles with the cobwebs Broken across it, and one eye is weeping From a twig's having lashed across it open. I'd like to get away from earth awhile And then come back to it and begin over. May no fate willfully misunderstand me And half grant what I wish and snatch me away Not to return. Earth's the right place for love: I don't know where it's likely to go better. I'd like to go by climbing a birch tree, And climb black branches up a snow-white trunk Toward heaven, till the tree could bear no more, But dipped its top and set me down again. That would be good both going and coming back. One could do worse than be a swinger of birches.

For days now a red-breasted bird has been trying to break in. She tests a low branch, violet blossoms swaying beside her, leaps into the air and flies straight at my window, beak and breast held back, claws raking the pane. Maybe she longs for the tree she sees reflected in the glass, but I'm only guessing. I watch until she gives up and swoops off. I wait for her return, the familiar click, swoosh, thump of her. I sip cold coffee and scan the room, trying to see it new, through the eyes of a bird. Nothing has changed. Books piled in a corner, coats hooked over chair backs, paper plates, a cup half-filled with sour milk. The children are in school. The man is at work. I'm alone with dead roses in a jam jar. What do I have that she could want enough to risk such failure, again and again?

Beyond is a brightness I am not equal to Yet what I see Turns into what I want, And to bring nothing but this body To pass through The one thing between Myself and what I crave, Almost done, the world a ruin Of leaves, winter at the throat, My song over and over until So familiar I can do What I am about to do While you who rise from the table And walk from room to room Will remember only the sound Of what cast herself through All that glass, instead of the song That was sung until finally You would ask to know more.

A Bird, came down the Walk - He did not know I saw - He bit an Angle Worm in halves And ate the fellow, raw, And then, he drank a Dew From a convenient Grass - And then hopped sidewise to the Wall To let a Beetle pass - He glanced with rapid eyes, That hurried all abroad - They looked like frightened Beads, I thought, He stirred his Velvet Head. - Like one in danger, Cautious, I offered him a Crumb, And he unrolled his feathers, And rowed him softer Home - Than Oars divide the Ocean, Too silver for a seam, Or Butterflies, off Banks of Noon, Leap, plashless as they swim.

the truth flies     hungry, at least     and otherous, of which—though it may be one—Kafka said troublingly, it has many faces it’s the faces one wants, tripping the light shadows of     its skin colours      of its wordy swiftness, angry and solvent, of its loud remarks as of feeding flocks                      one year, one, among the smallest birds in the Northwest, flew into the house     a darting, panic thought     at the walls and grasses     perched on the top right corner of the frame of Tom Field’s painting wherein adulterous Genji is found out—so Lady Murasaki reads from her blue scroll—and permitted me to take it in my hand     soft, intricate mind     honouring     and lift it out into the air and the next year, again, one flew into the house, almost certain, like a visitor, gold-crowned     winged floating about     odd discoveries     and alighted on the brim of the lasagna dish     my hand trembled as I took it up and moved slowly to lift it out of the window     into the air     a kind of thinking     like everybody else looking     for a continuing contravention of limits and of substance for Sharon Thesen

As for her, the circumstances must be ordinary And so the return. Door unlocked. The path mowed Right to the oiled gate; the pasture Cleared of stone and alder. All untouched Enough to enter. The man or woman Off down the valley or working above Treeline. No other sound but a few strays Hurrying through the dusk as if the end Will begin, certain and with nothing More to say. She does not know she does not know. Having come back to find her kind And none being left she took herself up Into a tree unclear what to do next save only Sing the song she wanted sung back to her.

The bird’s-eye view abstracted from the bird. Cover me, says the soldier on the screen, I’m going in. We have the sense of being convinced, but of what? And by whom? The public is a hypothetical hole, a realm of pure disappearance, from which celestial matter explodes. I believe I can speak for everyone, begins the president, when I say famous last words.

Sometimes I think about climbing a telephone pole but then what? Telephone poles now have almost nothing to do with telephones but I liked how a curly cord went into the receiver then a sturdier black wire went into the wall through the wall out to a pole then miles and miles of wire pole wire pole sometimes underground underwater to whomever you needed who’d dry her hands thinking Gosh now what or Thank heavens or Oh no then say Hello as a question or a lie then the intimate negotiations and sorry confessions and flat jokes would take word form from excited electrons moving through the wire and sometimes a cowboy would suddenly gallop to town through dust and cactus Yup a storm’s a-coming to call someone but the fates always intend so the cowboy must listen for the rest of his days to the phone make a funny insect-performing-Beckett sound until the operator comes on and says, Sorry but that calling area's been hit by the blast and the cowboy thinks, What blast? What blast? riding off into the moonlessly blue chaparral.

Of many reasons I love you here is one the way you write me from the gate at the airport so I can tell you everything will be alright so you can tell me there is a bird trapped in the terminal      all the people ignoring it       because they do not know what to do with it       except to leave it alone until it scares itself to death it makes you terribly terribly sad You wish you could take the bird outside and set it free or       (failing that) call a bird-understander to come help the bird All you can do is notice the bird and feel for the bird       and write to tell me how language feels impossibly useless but you are wrong You are a bird-understander better than I could ever be who make so many noises and call them song These are your own words your way of noticing and saying plainly of not turning away from hurt you have offered them to me       I am only giving them back if only I could show you how very useless they are not

1 One royal afternoon When I was young and easily surprised By uncles coming from the park At the command of nurses and of guards, I wondered, over trees and ponds, At the sorry, rude walls And the white windows of the apartments. “These,” said my uncle, “are the tallest houses.” 2 Yes, in the spring of my joy When I was visibly affected by a gaitered bishop, Large and unsteady in the flagged yard, Guards, dogs and blackbirds fled on every hand. “He is an old one,” said uncle, “The gaiters are real.” 3 Rippled, fistfed windows of your Dun high houses! Then Come cages made of pretty willows Where they put the palace girls! Green ducks wade slowly from the marble water. One swan reproves a saucy daughter. I consider my own true pond, Look for the beginning and the end. I lead the bishop down lanes and islands. 4 Yes, in the windows of my first existence Before my yawns became seasons, When nurses and uncles were sure, Chinese fowl fought the frosty water Startled by this old pontifex. “No bridge” (He smiled Between the budding branches), “No crossing to the cage Of the paradise bird!” Astounded by the sermons in the leaves I cried, “No! No! The stars have higher houses!” Kicking the robins and ganders From the floor of his insular world The magic bishop leaned his blessing on the children. 5 That was the bold day when Moved by the unexpected summons I opened all the palace aviaries As by a king’s representative I was appointed fowler.