The Sparrow

If you want me,

look for me in the mountains.

Look for me where the goats sing

And search the snowy ridge-caps

As I river through the hills

May you find the marks of my fingers

May you discover the ashes of my yesterlife

But never find me where I scamp

I am the lonely Prophet

clad in sheepskin

I fly on fishes’ wings

I am the wind’s soft voice

So it seems.

So it seems to me my life a shadow

So it seems I have no heart

The sparrow asked me, what is a heart?

For sparrows are not cursed with hearts

And it seems to me a violin

on which is played a concert of my future sorrows

An instrument for my symphonic breathlessness

I’ve many a broken string

And many still to break

Are words like violin pegs?

So it seems to me the heart’s a sailing ship

And its tangled rigging trappings to

Sail sundered over sea

To wander like drumbeats

And lust for the new tide.

And it seems to me the heart is like a tree

Be it birch or beech or chestnut

Furling out new flowers

Watching as old leaves

Settle in the earth

And roots o’er hill and byway

Over forest and neath river-

Pine and spruce and fir

Be it oak or cherry black

In the gray mountains I am unfound

Where the chill buffets the tundra

And the rain drips slowly from the lichen

I say to the sparrow

Who nods and flies away

Through pillows of numbness and skies of rain

The sparrow is gone.