Brief the Sparrows

 

Brief the Sparrows

                  for Nancy...

Somehow it is enough knowing the shadow

is visibly older than the object it blots

while soaking somehow the light right

 

above it, a noon at night, its bright being

a windless insistence tight along the line –

in this case the gable end facing south & her

 

reflection in the filled to the brim

birdbath.  Last week the remaining few

of the migrating songbirds, the species

 

of sparrow clutching the bare rose-

vine or goldenrod paused in the offering

remains of autumn.  I watched them settle

 

only to vanish into the dying grasses,

watched them rise when one line of light started

to slide from behind the bright canopy

 

of the sugar-maple yet clutching most of her

variegated fill of her yet living quilt.  Watched them,

their flight of sky casting bits of code

 

on the lawn, a dot of longing: dit-dah-dit-dit-dit-

dah-dit-dit; their equally brief, in this shadow,

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