Incandescent Amidst Leaving

Incandescent amidst leaving

Wood, that corona, not the sun’s

Left ringing the moon in total 

Eclipse, shed about the backyard

Bush, still growing more full and dark

Of night with one bird’s continuous

Singing hid from the startling flood

Electric of invented light,

Surrounds the unchanged song, the bird’s

Regulation run in search

Of notes that fall too easily off

Its tongue, as if the rising sun

Had silenced me to listen just

Once. My life cut short by this call,

Not a song, in excuse for

Singing at the top of my voice.

Issues mark the starling’s concern

Mine those famished complaints unheard

Yet to break the forthcoming day.

The lawn mowed, the garden plot

Just being turned over found for all

Its richness wanting, I have strewn

It myself with green leavings raked

From four cropped corners and scattered

Across to keep the topsoil moist

Beneath. Now starlings dart sleek sheers

Clipping between their beaks blade by

Patient blade the thread to line each

Nest with. It is time to drift toward

Sleep or waking from this woven height’s

Dream, from a tree’s crotch to descend

Winged or not, my least wish to live.

Fallen among gray spheres the sun

Finds nothing to kindle; its light

Met with indifference, seems less

Even than moon’s borrowed brilliance,

As now the flood of lights subsides

Across the dawning yard yielding

Less and less light to pronounce its

Sole predominance only in

Degree not kind. For all we see

In the facts they may well be right.

These dandelions deny it.

Diminutive, they turn up

Among ashen globes past their prime

Hosts from imprisoning sepals

Set free, with one week’s gold parole,

Saluting spring. Were we to hymn

Once as they, passwords through the day-

Watch we’d receive and be received

Open-armed light and light, lighter

To be uplifted on the wind,

A meaningless but deep reprieve;

Whispering, as they rise, we have

Been through this many times before.