the sea horse brain speaks to itself                                       across the divide

its two parts       its two selves      its two                              containers of

thought and memory      hello                                               hello

seemingly unreachable

until

the sea horse brain speaks to itself                                      the elephant blue

the elephant shape                                                                fence

to fence

even

as one fence                                                                              was torn down

and replaced                                                                             and

another                                                                                      painted over            bamboo green

the eye of the elephant is leaf

the trunk slope of

ivy

the elephant grey

what wasn’t reached

 

(the elephant has always protected me)

 

 

 

 

 

i said to myself there are three people i no longer

need to please; they cannot be pleased; and i named them; one-two-three

i felt vortex in the navel, whirlpool, and i decided to release them

to release my ideas of pleasing them            at that moment

of release a hawk flew across the open sky

the shape of the sky like a sea in the shape of india

it went from left to right in an upward tangent

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

a hawk flew into the oak

an eye, an almond eye

an almond eye on slanted branch

small birds      song birds

periodically buzz at the hawk

it sits unflinchingly         it flinches

sits up   eye white and iris         resettles into

eye      ,       into almond eye

on branch

 

 

 

 

 

 

against the sky on the road there was a knot

in the knot there was a girl

in the girl there was a woman

in the woman was a knot

behind the knot

the sky

 

 

 

 

 

 

a bird in winter is evident

thought  a call  a calling

a trill             a trilling

a chirp  a chirping

or not

 

 

 

 

 

 

four whooping cranes  white discs in the distance

whites of the eyes floating in an inlet

of river;  they had flown off, then re-

turned; four floating on an inlet

of water, too far for detail, too far even

with binoculars;  four white floating ovals

in a channel, and behind them   in a line,

in a long extended line in their gray

coats, each one, wearing its feathers, one

behind the the other, brushed,      in its dignity,

grey,  along the bank of the inlet of the river,

against the bank, at the edge of the forest,

which was a pine forest,  in their gray

overcoats, each, the one more delicate than the next,

one connected to, separate from, as

in a chain of, synaptic, thought, relation-

ship, gray, grey, brushed, like a hat,

like a hat, like a hat with a hat-band, brushed,

floating, feeding, in a line, stretched and

stretching, a hundred, two hundred, more

were the sand hill cranes

 

 

 

and to the right

and forefront of the eye-whites

whooping cranes

the blackbirds in their

persistence

floating

continuum

 

 

for rafael

 

 

 

there are a handful of robins

and a handful of starlings

in the hackberry and in the oak

this morning practicing their diphthongs

 

 

 

 

 

 

in winter in the hackberry

the robins gather their thoughts

which are mainly of fruit

and nest

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

in the winter the robins

are visible in the hackberry tree      (against the sky)

their orange-red breasts exposed

thought-to-thought

 

 

 

 

 

 

i walk below along (the) pavement

my own orange-red parenthesis

flat foot      steady      inspired

___   ___

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

the birds in the morning

continue to fly to branch

to perch, to fly

to branch         to perch

to fly