silver titmouse
looks like a river spirit
on your speckled grey branch
a sun spirit glows under your wings
feed your hatchlings coal before winter

southwest american finch
with a face like plaster on a brick wall
you are a fierce echo of a raptor
through years like wonderful blazes
of fire, each of all twenty million

acclaimed nightingale
traveled nightingale
sung and shone and shedding tales
do you use your celebrity to distract
predators or does the weight abstract you?

and calandra
all over your coat is a spackled
story of the world in colors
and you left your molt in cages
in houses on cliffs in so many places

maintained with rubble
around the corners and floors
your crest poking out the cracking facade,
and your nesting to stone like a frozen petard
children under your wing for not to go blind

nightingale all
reverberations and stretchings
of the forest focus back on you
but you are unseen, and a larger spirit;
i think of you as the forest

resulting rosefinches
that burn within
like stages of celestial fission
sustaining together greater
and much smaller fires

or other small birds like the river spirit