Once I Could Say

Once I could say
my loyal friend, the house wren.

I might even sing to him.
Did I not hear the beatific,

the breathlessness—
a patter shaking the tamarind pod,

the bright green feathery foliage
stammered by a breeze?

Those muttering implosions,
did nothing intend them?

Is the harp, too, obsolete?
When the wren took his awl

to the infested branch
he fed me an idea there.

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