The Beak & The Body Entire
by Christina Hutchins |
From the third floor of a bottle-brush tree
I am all morning serenaded
by the plain, brown sparrow who yesterday
evening flew into my high room
& fluttered madly in the corners.
October blooming jasmine was tuning
the air for loss. I spoke
soft, ridiculous endearments
while the bird perched on the curtain rod,
chirped along a chair rail, then swooped
out the window now open at my elbow…
where shifts of air change & shift-change
again, & the whistle-voice announces
each change & comments, too, how
sunlight’s unhurried lightning keeps
falling through a bridal-veiled sky…
The sun keeps passing over my wrists &
leaping up from the floor between shadows
of ankle & table-leg! Around the curved,
unstill shadows of my shoulders & head,
negative space is no darkness but light,
embracing my shadows from every side.
A radiant sun all around me?
How can this be? You know:
singing’s release.
The Dead
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