Harbinger   

A heart, blurred

Urgent, becoming winged

Alights the chilled haze

And descends

You are the visited

And turn from a task

Unresolved

There is secret conversation

Of new melody and

Sweet remembrance.

The umber woods

Bent and motionless

Overhear

Nothing is sacred

48

bring the funk, the

masked man said, the camera

and your black box of

cryptic lenses

bring your list of birds, he said (

adjusting the light) the whole

endless tally, so that we might

weigh the years

bring more than you know

sort through it later

bring

he said, all you can carry of

drink, witness, abandon

drive north

sing

there are warblers here, in the spruce

blown beyond their sun, scattered

among dark-eyed juncos 

they'll be dead by morning

47

quiet a while, or not so

with my footsteps and

those long acres beyond

up, through bare trees and

the dog leading, black

with red around her soft

buckled throat

a deer scull, placed

as an offering, a stone

by a stream imagining

altars, I suppose

probably placed there

by a child or a weathered

bird watcher, because

why not and doesn’t it

seem right to raise the dead

above, and changing

the April sky tugs tomorrow

across the afternoon

46

beyond the mist

lamp-yellow and new

three willows

three years since

and gone still

you will answer, at times

a delicate question

with such an appearance

where are you now?

beyond the mist

lamp-yellow

and you left us, why?

three willows, lit with young leaves

glowing through a slow white morning

and the kingfisher, low

above the shallow

chattering

there is something worth hunting

on the other side

45

poets are a blight

doing nothing

earning less

passing off assonance

as walls built, or posing 

the calloused, but worldly

gardener  (a vain hedge clipper

) all the while begging each new

flight of topiary nonsense

to speak life and make good

the bowed, selfish shapes

dividing the true road from

those warm yellow

windows

44

gone away,

there are walls

through the woods

where pasture yawned

the soft echo of a different green

lingers in hay fern and moss

gone away, love

the barn between the giant maples

reduced to this square

where the floor was poured too well

the loft, vanished between

those velvet fingers of loss

gone away, love, but

there are walls

running from the brook
to the old road

and so often, when walking here

I mean to sing your name

gone away, love, but still 

I mean to sing