Setting down the early pages of our work
on ornithology, while still children,
so soon after the war, we quickly learn
how these days one is simply not allowed
to write this way, that is, at will, freely—
the elements of style are revised,
by people we don’t know, while we are out
observing in the fields or forests, tired
by paddling over lakes, and crossing plains,
or finding ourselves high in mountains, or driven
to the sea’s verge, as all our subjects are
in motion. It’s our task to hold, to keep,
each in our field of view, not turn away
to still more serious issues, while the hours
we thus waste are confused only by love.
It’s summer now, the time for thunderclaps
is hard upon us, and before long we
will, in our own words, have to say what these
lives mean—for why else, why except for them,
take such copious notes, why else intone
these names so solemnly, why stand in rain
day after day, or bathe shyly in sun?
Let’s fly across the mainland toward Fire Peak,
heedlessly, lest life’s tendrils clasp
at emptiness, and we neglect our task,
a simple one, to adhere to the truth
of these June days, nights where the triangle
of summer stars, with its celestial swan
recalls birds whose histories we’ve nailed down
in daylight, scarcely understanding how
to keep living “sustainably,” out in
the open, more or less all by ourselves.
*For Eli & Phoebe*
VII.18.2014