This is not a poem
about silence in the traditional sense, unless
you are like me and
suppose that it is the same as the absence of
the banality, good
and firm, that you grew up with. A move, say,
from Connecticut to
North Carolina, and then to California, and back:
the air always feathered,
thankfully, the outdoor cafe with its crackling
hedges in which little
brown men shatter their voices over traffic. But
the yolk of the song
is not the yolk I know. No cardinals lift from
the pool-side, trailing
the fingers of ancestors in their tails. The
spontaneous generation
of snow buntings from last night’s winter leavings
does not, as far as
I can see, occur here. And this is also not a poem
about love, although
now that you are identifiable, you are something
aside from state lines,
or regionalism, even; and like the crow I have seen
you everywhere, although
I take note of your every subspecies, of you in each
biome, under each noon.