On these spring days
my body tries its wings.
Birdsong’s a border:
Cross over. Don’t cross over.

Maybe it’s a redwing’s wheeze
or a junco’s trill,
my pocket lint plucked up
for a robin’s nest.

And I would give them everything
if their songs carried across
boundaries of early dark.

With luck, the body will feed
a few worms for a few birds.
I’ll feed the yellow warbler

in the sweet timothy,
the goldfinch in the hedge.
I’ll become that odd vibration

pressed against your eardrum,
with news from another world.

		*

Don’t look now but my body’s
vanishing on a May day.
May day. My body signals

no distress. It simply
vanishes among birdcalls and bluets,
catcalls and catkins,

foxglove and the kit’s yip.
I say nothing, and let it go.
As a parent lets a child

wander the yard’s edge
for its eventual going
into the world, I let my body


wander at the edge of human
being and human doing.
Let it try its wings, its first

gestures on the wind.
The sun’s so bright
it blinds all signs of distress.

Someone could be dying –
or coming back –
without a trace.

		*

This afternoon I know a ring
of fire will circle the moon,
the world coppery in eclipse.

Cows will low and lie down,
birdcall shatter, and a different world
demand our attention for an hour.

What if the world were just that bright –
dull copper, sickles of light fallen
across the lawns, each green thing

subdued, all as it might be
when the sun winds down.
What if the world were just that bright –

and not this May morning:
the goldfinch wings stunning,
the green leaves’ explosions.

And what if the world’s still brighter –
at the edge of vanishing
mockingbirds make more calls

than they can possibly know.
The red tulip’s center
is wine-dark and shedding

its petals. The bulb’s going
underground. And somewhere in the field
that old bubbler, the bobolink,

turns a Keatsian ode
into a spring paean –
just as lush, just

as mortal, and –
believe it, for once –
without a trace of pity.