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.
