Indigo Bunting

  
This is music, he said,
and his voice climbed
the thin ladder of air

like a cat chases moths,
tumbled like
the river desperate

in flood—his chest filling
with the thick
liquid of song. This

is music: not so much
the silver-chorded calls
or the silent intervals

of indigo flash
between yellowgreen limbs,
but the complete cessation:

the wind, the river, the earth’s
core groaning
among its fiery teeth

to hear this simple song.

  
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