I
The embryo un-gels, falls runny through splits of this open palm.
In the corner of the living room I catch the wrinkled fern frond
unfurling midrib, the just-open stipe service to me only
in this muted light. Overnight, the cactus pushed out from its stem
a new bud, a sternum cracked open to make room for this other heart.
Outside, at the base of the honey locust, a cardinal turns focused:
a pair of robins feud over a slick body the rain’s just let from its burrow.
They’ve each an end and no more than two quick tugs before it’s torn
and all its rings go falling from the central shaft, clinking
against each other as they slide down and land in a ruddy pile, easy
as loosing a thread from its eye, I imagine. I am witness to the bed of red
shortleaf needles upon which it dies. When I look back for the cardinal
it is gone. Even I know the disquiet of stillness here in this mourning
as I stand in this room, legs calm and apart, and watch a stream
of blood run steady down each my thighs.
II
I’ll tell you everything I know about blue jays, what makes them blue,
how their plumes don’t stow it but that sacs of air in their barbs scatter
incoming light, casting a blue light from the bird, making a non-blue
thing appear it. Roses scraping the northern window mimic
the lonely bird who slings its bawl through its sad radius to
whatever will listen. I heard one can hear the flow of water
through a tree so now I press my head to anything to hear
hearts drumming. Listen: you can hear an echo coming. Ready
the pruned breast’s drops pooling at its tip–lower it to this
open mouth. I sense you dreaming inside me. God of anything, send me
something to keep alive. I’ll tell you then what I’ve known but what
do you know of throats anyway, what have you to say of red, of blue,
of the small clefts of light that drip through the feet of curtains,
of the way the same red bird returns each dusk to the most-east branch
of the blue beech out back, singing or crying I can never be sure.