What the Given Says to the Made
       

How odd the ordinary birds that praise
the common, which their music cannot be.
Come, says the swallow, as if to raise
a flag from the thicket, its winter leaves
woven in the heartwood, the gutter, the nest.
You hear it every day, the phantom blossom
of song in the bush, the more in the less,
how it gives the seen an unseen name.
Come, it beckons, which is how it makes
light of things, how it takes them in,
where both name and named die into music.
Ask the child who leans to the grave to listen.
There is a bird in there, he will tell you.
And you thought it was you alone, 'til now.

Tweet
Copyright © 2012 Bruce Bond All rights reserved
from Southwest Review
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission