Before the Birds

Up before the birds
In the milking hour
Quiet night free hand
Poems like rocks fall
From the boulders that roll me
Over in my sleep

A poem is not a poem
Unpolished
First, you hold the piece
You feel its heft, it’s pull and pulse
You weigh tossing the pebble
You want to give it
Back to the river
Back to the night

Do you think a poem
Is a fragile thing?
A literary object
Under glass?
Words like wings
Lift the burdens of sorrow
In the poem we rise

The composer’s notes
Are incomprehensible
On the page
The composer’s music moves
People in waves
Rhythmic, steady
Forever

Here you have truth
Grenades for the fibs
You tell yourself
Something stronger for the lies
You are told
Boom bah
Boom bah
There was nothing
Now there is something