Can’t tell you how many birds
I saw across the highway?
Thousands, hundreds of thousands,
The sky was pixelated with birds.
Every cloud was like a pincushion
Of crammed pinpoints and holes.

From the western sky
Another flock merging with others,
The tail end of that group
Seemed like an endless conduit
Of more and more birds appearing.

To the east, merging flocks
Careen to the right and to the left.
One vast wing made of starlings
Sweeps low across the fields.

In solemn procession the boulevard trees.
The godhead shattered on its altar of leaves.
No tears shed by the mother of moving space.
I meditate upon her ultimate grace.
I contemplate her divine wisdom
To be the unknown light of any kingdom,
To exist in her own existence
Offering distances without resistance,
So deeply buried in transparent time
For her name there is no rhyme.
She who wanes into the future’s past
Denies a glimpse of her original cast.
She who loved with all her senses
Leaves us now without defenses—
The stage stripped, the scene changing,
Actors unmasked in her rearranging.
At the exact moment of any line
It is wind and space that undefine.
At the exact moment of occurrence
Her passing echoes with recurrence.

What one lacks in endurance
You make up for in attention.
Erogenous zones turn inward.
You penetrate mutual happiness.
You are grateful for caresses
And kisses that taste of sweetness
Cultivated over time. After all,
It is time you must fill to the full,
It is time you must love
In each other for the sex
Of decline to gather arousals
From the mingling of spirits
In the flesh that remembers.