Bird Dance

The nice thing about tree rings

is tomorrow they’ll curve

out of themselves, stay beneath

blossom or shoot off

into each other; they’ll grow

then gray into each other—

to delineate one from another

is like pulling at centipede grass:

you’ll pull up the entire lawn

or forest, leaving only skinfolds

of earthen mounds, carved-out

wrist story of Monster Slayer:

in a virgin creek, leg & thigh

of his mother soak

up the Sun. Immaculate

pulse of radiance & ripple

in her soon rounded

middle, jut out for (f)all—

longer than any concentric

season, dark and dry

circles reveal a tree split

open, what is found between

arm bones—a kind of sheet

music with all whole notes;

this is how rings sing

in the early morn, a choral

of cicadas sound come, come

as though they had wrists

to shake gourds at His coming.