I want a pet crow I saved once from certain death

to bring me tiny gifts each morning: rubber band,

soda-can tab, piece of blue crockery. I want to write

a “Ballad of Cloudbursting Perfection” so revealing

it is mandatory reading in the 21st C Anthropocene.

I want to make someone’s syllabus of joy. Micro-blog

the end of my child’s sadness. Take this as proof of life,

if not proof of a God too busy torturing guilty young men

in seminaries. My relationship with fog is more special.

My personal pronouns are Inside/Spirit, It/NoMan.

I should like to take you up on your special offer: rain

through thick green leaves all morning, and in return,

my silent guessing what all this green ephemera means.

The unsayable has no voice box. Like a sentence huddled

around a trashcan fire wearing thick grey blankets of sense.

Like wandering a sparse goat path at the sheer cliff edge

of a purpose revealed. Sometimes, I am wind sounding

through bronze chimes of syllables. Sometimes, I am

a man walking inside a dark forest, thinking, I am a man

walking inside a dark forest. Yellow-crimson leaves

curl past repair. Like skiffs, they slip from grey branches.

Then an icy breeze presses against my back. The red bird

I have waited for my entire life never arrives, but my crow

friend comes, brings me a silver thimble, cries a banner of

words, reading: Go deeper. Forget your life. Go deeper.