There Is a Birdsong at the Root of Poetry

For Ann Lauterbach Hemmed in by an un- tenable image: feathers planted below fragile branches of avian feet            scaly crossroads scoring a particular blue of sky offending through the uselessness of misplaced forms                       thorny prongs that make no sense (and yet belong) on the ground out of which the bird wings stiffly jut rigid as rhubarb leaf. Should you kneel the body's aged mechanism beneath the shade of dry feathers, should you angle the vulnerable cavern of ear—trembling passage to psyche's failures   our fall into suffering                           knowledge—toward the root should you listen you will hear the wasted strains of an underground song rising from the muffled beak: site of a perverse smothering throated core submerged deadened by thoughtless depths but alive for the dead have kept it safe from false music a ghoulish guard of LOVE SAFE from Psyche she who bullied by the cruelty of others the sophistication of fashionable libraries the envy of those who would molest the world into false confessions and banish                              all mystery with their dripping candles                   she who would unearth the birdsong                         to cage it she who                 will end by destroying what she loves most. Shhhh