Bluejay and second beginning
Bluejay
A tousled bluejay is sifting
through the gates and the locks
of the blocks, snapping
up seeds for his needs
and polishing, deep in his thoughts,
his blue coat with a cap
of a seltzer bottle, thin
and roughed-up from its death
on the curb, from its death
in the van, in a bag,
by the root of a linden,
and now to awake by the crack of a bluejay.
--
Second beginning
At the second beginning there were people on Earth.
There was already land, there were shores, there were fishermens' oars.
Daylight was fruitful in weaving and swallowing, perched
so the shadows of houses and cows would be cast
on the benches with a watery mood and a clarity
rolling like vortices east as the sun paddled west.
There were foxes by then, slugs and pebbles and geese,
there were stars, which although they had scarcely been talked to in years
were our peers. By the second beginning, a boy had already consumed
a piece of a shark he had caught on the dock, filleted
with the help of his father. By then we had already thought it was finished,
we'd already torn off the last of a wheatberry roll for a sparrow.