Never the Bluebird

"I am grateful
that red bird comes all winter
firing up the landscape
as nothing else can do."   – Oliver, from "Red Bird"










Do you associate
the years of your life
by the beauty
of the birds you've seen?

Do you find then your
voice underneath
the crusted hush
of a world gone loud?

Someday I'll wish
back to me the hours
I've spent when, alone,
staking out my random

claims along the trails
behind our suburban
home the birch
stand poking its white

candles up through
the limestone
alighting the forest
a protest to all things gray.

Where once, unless
I was mistaken,
a bluebird had darted
out of a deep pine ring

as such a flash
that it startled me;
it was as if being
tossed onto a new ocean

from a stable boat
for the blue was a fabric,
no, it was a wise eye,
no, it was a plume

of planetary crystal
disrupting, thankfully,
the boredom that loomed
over that year of life.