.

in mind, your name is soft,
and not unlike the silence
of the songbirds, in decline
but therefore valued even
more, its letters bunched
like birds into a swirling
mass of sounds that tip
the tongue unbound by sky,
like winged specks that
fly against marsh clouds
and disappear behind tall
reeds, a dusky-dotted funnel
of what-ifs that pour through
sleepy grass in search
of rest

it is a purple martin in the palm,
largest of the swallows but that
small, diminishing all other thoughts
of you, your seven letters skimming
hundreds low across the lake, too
impossible to count but even so
your name is like another gust of
wind that presses weeds like hands
through hair, that stirs the birds
in upward screeching streams who
lift away from thunderheads, fall
back again to waterbeds, finally
find another perching place from which
to chase their migratory mark

like me repeating sounds as if
to fly with angels in the dark