The grasses
on the river bank leap
to life with a tweak
and a dart and a frolic:
two hummingbirds, gleeful
as kites in the air,
uncornered
flicking and spinning
and flowing
skyward
until she descends
and suddenly he is behind her
in a foam of sea green,
and she motionless
in pink folds
of feather.
He seems to grow out
of her skin, one beak dipped,
one uplifted, until they tip,
head thrust back to wed
her mate's ascension,
a perfect fusion
of her and him.
For the length of a breath,
they are still as silence,
a canvas of hearts melting
in grass, and then
a cry of hosanna!
back into the air
before they disappear
- were they ever there? -
in a whistle
of air and silver.
To whom does this joy come?
Come back! Come back!
Circle his head with your wings
like a halo in shades
of the earth you both
came from.
Please don't
rest your song- not yet.
There's a perch for your weariness
on the branch of his ear:
Please, please sink your beak
deep in its whorl, thick
now and dull as death.
Pour your sweet liquid back
into the holes in his skull,
note rising on note in a
swirl that will unsettle
his torpor and let fly
the poem trapped
in his heart.
Speak through him,
I beg you, once more
in a long flow he can hear through the flatness.
Pry open the bud
of his mouth sealed
against winter
and brim with the music
I barely remember,
unceasing, violate,
whole.
Tell the artist how
you would like
to be drawn, I say.
This is your chance
to write your self-portrait.
The tiny doll girl
with a porcelain face
is first to share.
She instructs the page,
"Don't leave out
my sad eyes."
They are the color of
clear sky, uncompromising.
When I ask, she says,
"I have suffered," pools
rising on her pupils.
Her cat has died.
And Ty, I've been told
is so terrified by vegetables
and fruit of all stripes,
he avoids the lunchroom.
Yet he reads his elegant
cursive lines,
"In my dream,
I touched fruit
for a long time
and then it caught fire."
Just like my heart.
After everyone's done,
Noah shuffles up to my side,
his body billowing
in layers of cream puff.
"Paint me thin," he writes.
"Put me in the desert.
No houses, no roads,
to show my loneliness."
His voice comes from
far off, pillowy-soft,
as I paint a halo around
him. God, give him a hug
that he can receive
through the clouds
of his leaking ark.
And I take off my beret
to the brave artists,
burrowing, one by one,
out of their secret caves.
