There Is a Birdsong at the Root of Poetry

For Ann Lauterbach

Hemmed in by an un-

tenable image:

                 feathers planted

below fragile branches 

                 of avian feet            scaly crossroads scoring

a particular blue of sky

                 offending

through the uselessness of misplaced

                  forms                       thorny prongs

that make no sense (and yet belong)
 
                  on the ground

out of which

                  the bird wings stiffly jut

rigid as

                  rhubarb leaf.
 
                                                    Should you

kneel the body's aged mechanism

                beneath the shade of dry feathers,
 
                                                    should you

angle the vulnerable cavern

                of ear—trembling passage to psyche's
 
                failures   our fall

into suffering                           knowledge—toward the root

                                                    should you

listen        you will hear
  
                the wasted strains of an underground song

rising from the muffled beak: site of a perverse smothering

                throated core submerged

deadened by thoughtless depths

                but alive

for the dead have kept it

                safe from false music

a ghoulish guard of LOVE
 
                                                  SAFE from

                Psyche

she who
 
               bullied by the cruelty of others

the sophistication of fashionable libraries
 
             the envy of those

who would molest the world into false confessions

and banish                              all mystery

             with their dripping

candles                   she who would

unearth the birdsong                         to cage it

she who                 will end by destroying what she loves most.
 
           Shhhh, quiet

listen:

it is drawn by other amblers
 
               its strains awake in our attentions

as a sudden           bewildering              happiness

              ear wedded to earth, listen

and hear
   
          what those who know all

can not.


 

Copyright Credit: Jennifer Moxley, "There is a Birdsong at the Root of Poetry" from The Open Secret. Copyright © 2014 by Jennifer Moxley.  Reprinted by permission of Flood Editions.
Source: The Open Secret (Flood Editions, 2014)