Repeating the sunrise, the chirping bird
fills itself with the world, sings
it out in a puff, bob, and whistle—
cacophony to the bee in the flower
nuzzling, the thirst for more, deeper
still. The head twists in a blur
to clear the senses. A new realm.
The first dawn must have been like this.
You and I were there, as star-
ash, scattered in atoms not
yet gathered into the us we are—
just a lumbering shrug of bonding
here and there, perhaps a shudder
of recognition of what was to come:
the hum of promise the oak remembers
from the tumbling cupule fall. The thump.
And we wait between beats. Asleep
as the seasons repeat like a drum. Dreaming
the actor into being, the play resumes—
The rearrangement of ancient stories
into new ones, one sunrise
at a time, lines and acts repeated,
the lovers and the future assembled thus
in a shimmer like a placenta spilled,
or a surfacing fish. The wish for wholeness
rises and shines as we lie in the dark.
The thing we forget is this:
the song of sun in the bird,
the same arc and angle, the familiar
air. The oncoming light echoed
in a blur of stars between poles.
The hum in the wires. The letter from home.