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Birds small enough to nest in our young cypress Are physicians to us They burst from the tree exactly Where the mind ends and the eye sees Another world the equal of this one Though only a small boy naked in the sun Glad day glad day I was born Sparrow hatted old New York And the physician who brought me Drowned under sail next day in a calm sea There are birds small enough to live forever Where the mind ends and where My love and I once planted a cypress Which is God to us

are heading south, pulled by a compass in the genes. They are not fooled by this odd November summer, though we stand in our doorways wearing cotton dresses. We are watching them as they swoop and gather— the shadow of wings falls over the heart. When they rustle among the empty branches, the trees must think their lost leaves have come back. The birds are heading south, instinct is the oldest story. They fly over their doubles, the mute weathervanes, teaching all of us with their tailfeathers the true north.

Bustle and caw. Recall the green heat rising from the new minted earth, granite and basalt, proto-continents shuffling and stacking the deck, first shadows flung from the ultraviolet haze. A fern uncurls from the swamp, the microscopic furnace of replication warms the world, one becoming two, two four: exponential blossom. Lush with collision, the teacup balance of x and y, cells like balloons escaping into the sky—then the dumbstruck hour, unmoored by a river, a first fish creeps to the land to marvel at the monstrous buds of its toes. And stars grow feet and walk across the years, into these dozing, ordinary days, climbing the spine’s winding stair, where crickets yawn and history spins.

Birdsong, face it, some male machine gone addled—repeat, repeat—the damage keeps doing, the world ending then starting, the first word the last, etc. It's that etcetera. How to love. Is a wire just loose? Build an ear for that. Fewer, they say. So many fewer, by far. He's showing off to call her back. Or claiming the tree. Or a complaint—the food around here, the ants, the moths, the berries. She's making the nest, or both are. In feathers, in hair or twigs, in rootlets and tin foil. Shiny bits seen from a distance, a mistake. But fate has reasons to dress up. Stupid and dazzling have a place, a place, a place though never. She can't sing it.

1 Three sparrows in the schoolyard while waiting for my daughter to finish up her play with friends whose purity she will come to question in a few weeks and in that way I am reminded of the president when he speaks of enemies to the other side of the mirror but only in that way the three sparrows ruffled up the dirt as their wings and heads spun motorbike doughnuts after one of them had come back with a massive potato chip for the other two to fight over perhaps he was the provider or wasn’t hungry but simply couldn’t let a good bit of food go to waste Then a crow came and the winner sparrow went zooming into the orange orchard knowing fully well it would be impossible to alight and reappeared with a chip the size of his beak and a flurry of birds descended on the scene (I even saw a Fletcher) but kept my eyes on that little sparrow and am happy to report he kept what his mouth held though it occurs to me he was also mean and the one who seemed a provider might have been yoked in that way my wife during delivery was rung up like a bar code whenever the nurse knocked or the doctor was called 2 In the room there were women Counting up to ten dressed in blue The doctor was also Pregnant in her final week The neonate came out broke The sound barrier and was whisked Away from the mother the father Had cut the cord having held Scissors before he couldn’t turn down The doctor’s offer as if he would Have denied someone an entry Or exit visa Then the women were gone And neighbors and friends had to go To work and the mother was alone With breast or formula milk One nurse suggested the latter Was the better soporific 3 An infant smile A gas tickle The price of milk It goes up in war My son is here to teach me My temperament is genetic His smile is blind It dreams a spandrel Turns opiate in the eyes He grunts impatient wants Gas out as soon as It forms in peace He coos It’s what doves do Though excitable Observant of moving lips Attempts utterance Throws up happy spit And hunger’s renewed

to Simone Wandering off under those astrological signs charted just for you, my quiet trekker—all those houses & planets so perfectly straight-faced but still baffling at birth—don't think badly of me when I'm dead & you've gone deep into the distance of love tangles, moneyed interests, & old-fashioned commutes—into life in other words—I did what I could for you, knowing it might not be enough—I see now that I can't save you from suffering, & trying to hurts if I'm not kind. Tho I still want your life to be untroubled, & am afraid for you, a fear made out of my own fear of a future I can't control— the world so often a human heart that eats itself— places like New Orleans the Swat Valley Fukushima— the names of those remote destinations for film crews and symposium panels are places people die native to those regions & out to kill or defend life from itself—there is so much misery there that refuses to call itself misery & that sees itself instead as the unimpeachable power of a righteous day. And there are criminals & dunces elsewhere— hideous partyline whips, Saxon in outlook and proud of it—there are the bodysnatched and the inane candy-stripers & the greedy and the martini narcissists high on the rising year— but let's take the long view: these are not your true companions, & out of my reach your life will make itself in struggle & love perhaps dependent on the strength that will come if I only let go when you step out the door as hazel-eyed now as always & maybe more so this morning in slate-gray Gore-Tex.

Saturday I ran to Mytilene. Bushes and grass along the glass-still way Were all dabbled with rain And the road reeled with shattered skies. Towards noon an inky, petulant wind Ravelled the pools, and rinsed the black grass round them. Gulls were up in the late afternoon And the air gleamed and billowed And broadcast flung astringent spray All swordy-silver. I saw the hills lie brown and vast and passive. The men of Mytilene waited restive Until the yellow melt of sun. I shouted out my news as I sped towards them That all, rejoicing, could go down to dark. All nests, with all moist downy young Blinking and gulping daylight; and all lambs Four-braced in straw, shivering and mild; And the first blood-root up from the ravaged beaches Of the old equinox; and frangible robins' blue Teethed right around to sun: These first we loudly hymned; And then The hour of genesis When the first moody firmament Swam out of Arctic chaos, Orbed solidly as the huge frame for this Cramped little swaddled creature's coming forth To slowly, foolishly, marvellously Discover a unique estate, held wrapt Away from all men else, which to embrace Our world would have to stretch and swell with strangeness. This made us smile, and laugh at last. There was Rejoicing all night long in Mytilene.

Here bounds the gaudy, gilded chair, Bedecked with fringe and tassels gay; The melancholy mourner there Pursues her sad and painful way. Here, guarded by a motley train, The pampered Countess glares along; There, wrung by poverty and pain, Pale Misery mingles with the throng. Here, as the blazoned chariot rolls, And prancing horses scare the crowd, Great names, adorning little souls, Announce the empty, vain and proud. Here four tall lackeys slow precede A painted dame in rich array; There, the sad, shivering child of need Steals barefoot o’er the flinty way. ‘Room, room! stand back!’ they loudly cry, The wretched poor are driven around; On every side they scattered fly, And shrink before the threatening sound. Here, amidst jewels, feathers, flowers, The senseless Duchess sits demure, Heedless of all the anxious hours The sons of modest worth endure. All silvered and embroidered o’er, She neither knows nor pities pain; The beggar freezing at her door She overlooks with nice disdain. The wretch whom poverty subdues Scarce dares to raise his tearful eye; Or if by chance the throng he views, His loudest murmur is a sigh! The poor wan mother, at whose breast The pining infant craves relief, In one thin tattered garment dressed, Creeps forth to pour the plaint of grief. But ah! how little heeded here The faltering tongue reveals its woe; For high-born fools, with frown austere, Condemn the pangs they never know. ‘Take physic, Pomp!’ let Reason say: ‘What can avail thy trappings rare? The tomb shall close thy glittering day, The beggar prove thy equal there!’

The night John Henry is born an ax of lightning splits the sky, and a hammer of thunder pounds the earth, and the eagles and panthers cry! John Henry—he says to his Ma and Pa: “Get a gallon of barleycorn. I want to start right, like a he-man child, the night that I am born!” Says: “I want some ham hocks, ribs, and jowls, a pot of cabbage and greens; some hoecakes, jam, and buttermilk, a platter of pork and beans!” John Henry’s Ma—she wrings her hands, and his Pa—he scratches his head. John Henry—he curses in giraffe-tall words, flops over, and kicks down the bed. He’s burning mad, like a bear on fire— so he tears to the riverside. As he stoops to drink, Old Man River gets scared and runs upstream to hide! Some say he was born in Georgia—O Lord! Some say in Alabam. But it’s writ on the rock at the Big Bend Tunnel: “Lousyana was my home. So scram!”

It’s not hard to imagine: my ancestor—a dry season, dust like chalk on her tongue—mixes spit with clay, traces a river on rock. Next day: rain. Why shouldn’t she believe in the power of rock and her own hand? I carry this need for pattern and rule, to see connections where there aren’t necessarily any. After my first miscarriage, I cut out soda, cold cuts. After the second, vacuuming and air travel. After the third—it’s chalk and spit again. I circle rocks, swim the icy river. And when my son is born, he balances the chemical equation that is this world. And logic? Logic is my son’s kite, good so long as you have wind, string, something heavier than hope to tether you.