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Poem with Birds

Oh you real effulgent frailties          Look

a book, a banister, a sinister

affirmation                              of how little

we achieve in looking            a bog, an orchard, an icy shore

shorn of longing                     a flower, a power-

line flecked with                     lingering over their split

tails, then the                          mass of them amassing

living darkening                     cloud

             When they settle       I am slumped

in my plushest            lonely             meadow, nook

look, look                                the augur of them in

the unfamiliar immediacy    of any old mothering oak