While it was happening,
the absolute
not me of it, the all
of a sudden see—
through whirr of wings beside me
that the late sun
just as I looked up
turned into a hovering
flash, a watery grey—
green iridescence
as the beak dipped into
a funnel of blossom,
dipped and was gone, and not even
the blossom’s white
tip bent in its going,
or shivered—
While this, which could have happened
without me, here
or elsewhere, happened the way
it did, and would
continue happening
for others, for no one,
for nothing but the blind urge
of its happening,
this ever transient
accidental
crossing of momentums
that was, in this case,
beautiful but could
have not been and so
seemed all the more consoling
for the thought—
even the thought of death,
just then, consoling,
shaping itself inside me
as the now there
now not there hovering
of bird, flower, late
sun iridescences—
beloved singers,
you who in the aftermath
surged from the shadows
to sing in your different voices
the same song. Route
of evanescence, Mother
of beauty, It
avails not, time nor place,
distance avails not,
if you had known, just then,
three hundred miles
away, in another state,
that one of the nurses
getting my brother up
from the commode
and back to bed, the one
who held him on
his left side, the dead side,
all of a sudden
lost hold of him and, as
he fell hard, grabbed
for the loose papery gown
and ripped it off,
so that he lay there naked,
utterly exposed—
beloved singers, tricksters
of solace, if
you had known this, seen
this, as I did not,
you would have offered him
no sumptuous
destitution, no fire-
fangled feathers,
or blab about death as being
luckier than one
supposes. You would have bowed
your heads, you would
have silently slipped back
into the shadows
out of which you surged forth,
singing to me.
