Bird Language

If you collected flowers from another planet

would we be richer?

If you could see the world from above

Now, in the holy moment,

Would you see us bowing to ourselves,

our ghosts, the birds, speaking their own language saying,

“How does it feel,

to be born on accident?”

Myself having never seen birds as gods

But as friends, as the men

sitting on tiny plastic chairs in Hanoi

drinking warm beer or the Quetchua women

With wool hats walking slowly uphill

Both noble, distinctly themselves

But still distracted by the language

of credit and time, heartbreak and

A disappointing god

While the birds remain poised

On their song and their breathing” (rumi)

Upon the morning, the air they will ride,

The neighbor trees, bird work to be done

Aware, as a bird might be, of the three things

I cannot change

The past, the truth, and you

After Anne Lamont’s sober Texas friend