The Small Birds

They ask us to understand our grief

by simply leaping out, trusting the air

which is far more complex than sorrow, to follow

all we've ever done with a pure heart and change us

completely, but never for long.

Someday, you say, you'll be glass in a window

that looks across a landscape of wilderness and snow

which will melt when you go out there and walk, because

you love a good man or woman. But whom

do you love, after all? For now, you open

that window and lean out. For now you just watch things:

vivid rugs on hardwood floors, closets full of clothes

that would never fit you, where another person's smell

lingers for years. And then it vanishes.