Bird Saver

ONE TUBE OF BIRD SONG joins the next
pipes fill the room with random action,
follow each other around, link arms
shadowy vectors and ducts of half made-
out sounds right behind, follow each other
under the ceiling fan in the rented room
over the mattress drifting above bed springs
as a dirty cloud, above the radiator that says,
quote cloud unquote.
                         On a room that wavers, darkens, will reset,
pipes that come in three colors—promenade,
hacking, and white listening—a listening-to-opera-while-
cooking-dinner-near-an-open-window-in-early-spring—
and the do-si-do is on the brite green lawn,
a wallpaper of blossoms in the window pane.
                                                   Unlike the view
into a room that is periodically bricked over,
the villa with an urn of pitch-black flowers on a vine,
or the origami of other birds the Baltimore oriole
folded over the cardinal over the cedar waxwing
let’s mate! let’s mate! there’s still room to think,
to move around under the pipes,
a wallpaper of blossoms in the window pane.
The fly carries around its action like a wire hat.