Perhaps in Your Next Life You Will Be a Bird

Look, there – / between the trees where the ferns have grown in wild and the blue jays make their nests / the sun falls in pieces and illuminates the leaves still wet with dew / A spider hangs a web between the low hanging branches of the pines, lit up brilliant with morning and damp / far off the highway sings with passing cars

You think often about how someday you must face the sky / About all the heartbreaks that have taken place under its blue expanse / about all the heartache survived / And all the birds that have made their homes so far over the earth, and their bones made of magic / perhaps in your next life you will be a bird / and ride the wind over fields where farmers cut hay and alfalfa / over streets where cars sit parked, or some moving / You think about how one day you must face the sky / and learn that for all your trying you are still earth bound

Maybe this is autumn, and this is how it feels / The season's last dandelion still has its wishes / bumblebees float sleepily in gardens, living off the mums / At the top of the trees all the leaves have begun to catch fire

Hydrangeas long dead decompose in the garden / and sunflowers, too / stalks still standing though the flowers have died and their petals melt into the soil / You have never given yourself to someone, not wholly / perhaps you watch the dying flowers with a kind of understanding / you know how it feels to wither in the cold

Your dog, still a puppy, sits watch in the yard / you pray that some day you will have half of her courage

Constantly the wind is changing from wild to calm / and the birds go with it