Birds

Small, yellow birds come together

in swooping, long chains – they look

like sheet music , faint sketched out rows

dotted with black beaks and tails, perfectly

plotting out their song (a tweeting, chirping,

unapologetically freeform melody); swirling

staffs of song wrap around in ribbons,

and the closer in it ties, the louder it sings,

and the further out it loops, the more faint

and elegant it begins to sound. I am some-

where in that music, somewhere behind

those layers of invisible and disappearing staffs

(five line staffs, I can just make out),

being carried away piece by piece (each pair

of tiny bird-feet carrying a pound or so of flesh),

and the music rinsing me clean (on top the mountain,

so green, its scent so alarming), leaving me left

all but a man, scorched by their music,

wet and cold like an infant.