Crows announce a turning toward a fall
More snuggled up to winter, bones
Of foliage resplendent in death’s glow,
And themselves for neighborhoods to hear.
But high on the transformer, surveyor,
The pigeon’s vibrations neither from throat
Nor flap of wings for nothing does it further.
Twitches, yes, even scans from yard to yard
But dive it never does and where the sky
Still carries clouds that call back summer,
Hangs a belly low, its gray a purple green.
These non things which make a pigeon hold
Give flux to all that pigeons never are:
The clock has changed the hour’s early rise.
The temperature appears in frosty gleam
And distant traffic brushing like a shore.
But the pigeon, emperor of serpents strung
Among the wooden pillars of our talk—
A fence to keep our thoughts in lines
Of cross and loop, held well within the city—
Is still after breakfast on its perch.
Is staid as the houses’ black tar roofs
Sucking sun which passes through the pigeon,
All immanence and centered in the sway.
