—And then a lighter sorrow sheltered me.
For weeks I was under the cloak of an archon
then I saw spring, and the spell was broken.
Today the woodpeckers are nesting near the ridge.
She—the big she—stays all morning
in the lichen laurel, waiting for them to approach her.
She makes her call, “I-am-not-I-am-not”
and the males sound like “whacko-whacko”—
they fly through their own crazy vowels,
they fly saying it.
The other end of the binoculars could be the key.
The world would be smaller, then
the most gleaming changes could go by.
Hops up and down, she wants to
and does, she tries
the mincing footsteps of a geisha. This makes them
speed to her, keeping absent places in their wings:
white spots,
as if the thinking of the apple tree had seeped in.
This world is my twin
but I was not cut from the same cloth, I passed
through the shadow so I could be
amazed at it—
thank you shadow, funny birds,
thank you I don’t understand what—