RHYME

Air an instrument of the tongue,

The tongue an instrument

Of the body, the body

An instrument of spirit,

The spirit a being of the air.

A bird the medium of its song.

A song a world, a containment

Like a hotel room, ready

For us guests who inherit

Our compartment of time there.

In the Cornell box, among

Ephemera as its element,

The preserved bird—a study

In spontaneous elegy, the parrot

Art, mortal in its cornered sphere.

The room a stanza rung

In a laddered filament

Clambered by all the unsteady

Chambered voices that share it,

Each reciting I too was here—

In a room, a rhyme, a song.

In the box, in books: each element

An instrument, the body

Still straining to parrot

The spirit, a being of air.