30

A bird articulates upon the air
And the air inhabits its
Pound of flesh—hollow bones
Skull like a spent husk
Of wheat and a pinch of mealy
Grey that pilots it—
A bipartite mechanism that holds
The body in air
Pinioned tinily to the chassis
Rotating in its cuffs
At the little pricking breezes
The soil sends up
Flirting moment by moment on the
Beautiful changes the air
Makes, a slight articulated vessel
The evening flows through—

In deep heat blue flowers
Nod sleepily and
The sparrow beats its power
Over the land and air
And air beats up from
Dry spaces in the earth

—Our orbit the jointed movement
Of a ball that grinds
In a far lightless socket and burns—

The hurtling skeleton
Is a species of the air

Deep, a constellation of soil
Passes further into the earth