One bird close up by the house crow
makes the wall’s temporariness
suddenly exist
one call into
the arrival of the storm the announcing
by flocks and swarms
the flowerbeds turning in the solar system
listen –
Schubert and the thrush at once and
somewhere in space we
hang are hanging
also the red dress on the line I rush to get to
in time
also the slack in the line up-snapping then down
what scale this pitch-
changing slapping
of the cotton-poly blend listen and my approaching
arms rising to catch the
ties my hair blowing over it onto it behind us
from the open door the violin and beside us
at the edge of the woods the last of the thrush –
can we hear them
these flowerheads being carried in this solar system
sepals receptacles – the vascular bundles
inside the stems –
near the blown-open door the strings’ diminuendos –
also these hatchlings in their nest in the eave in the storm born in it
wrapping round them thunder twigs bits of mylar dusk
also accuracies of the
built porch of day of
the negative forcing, the solar constant, the
storm nonstop though modulating round these
dime-sized heads – in each
the magnetic chip and round it the tiny shellfish-crushable skull –
Venus is almost big as earth was lush at origin had
oceans imagine yet has no
water anywhere
today. Venus
had runaway
greenhouse. Could Earth. Of course we know it could he says
at the podium which fits in my head in the spot for under-
standing,
the question is rather how long
before runaway
occurs
one bird now
close up by the white house on the green hill (crow)
like a lockpick
one caw one
into the wildly cursive announcing by flocks and swarms
as somewhere in space we turn are
turning,
the final snowball Earth was followed promptly
by the Cambrian explosion
he explains
then eukaryoses cells with membrane-bound nuclei
expanding rapidly into eleven different body plans
which eleven still encompass
all creatures ever to inhabit Earth –
at the edge of the woods now the thrush
being sung out entirely by
this thrush –
the whole forest moving –
under the eave the just-hatching new ones in
thunder
in their
having been born
in it –
this is what is –
what will the sunshine tomorrow feel like
for the first time striking them
skulls necks eyeslits
tightening everything
creaking, pushing open the immense door –
power down now but us in here scanning the screen
for the emergency we are in to appear here it is
and the sound of the flapping of water
in wind –
and the sound of the nations gathering
for their final
negotiation,
everyone trying to speak in
whole sentences, listen,
they keep breaking, the suitcases fall open, the
inky speeches
wash away in the down-pour, what
will the delegates say now, listen,
it is 1965 in Selma, Alabama, the schoolboy is beginning again
his first-ever assignment in his one room school,
he shall scratch a word
onto the blackboard,
whose turn is it he thinks chalk in hand
and will there be someone on the other side of this to meet me
on the other side of this word if I spell it out correctly
it is simple and powdery and made of seven letters –
the force of the black is impossible to touch –
he stands there like a breeze still thinking he is dreaming
the dream he is late again for school
but he is not. He is on time. It is his turn. Who
is the teacher. What is that he feels
at his back in his shoulders. He looks at
his hand. Its swirling small shadow
round the stick of chalk.
From where in the earth did it come
this piece of moonlight, piece of dead coral.
Oh good dark he whispers to the black behind the shadows,
the hand-shadow being cast by his one self on the dark,
by the single lightbulb behind him the hum,
his own knuckles here and the tightly clenched fingers
wrapped like a bird-beak around the chalk
gripping something to bring home to the nest
because it must be shoved down
into the newborn, this cursive –
must be forced down in
that they be made
to inhabit
another day –
it is so simple –
and the next-on curl – and the billowing handshadow
over each spot he need mark –
and how nothing can
stop it
this our mineral
imagination
as here now
on this page
this uniball pen
shall write
if I make it
his word out completely
over this
void
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