Many Feathers

Many feathers. In the silence of many feathers.
- Robert Bly

Today my window spoke to me
in the language of leaves,
told me of gravity and the tired
hands of twilight day after day
pulling at the trees’ thousand fingers,
the trees with their lifetime of cycles,
the wind, its invisible wings.

I have seen things only words
will outlive, it said. But even words
kneel before the silence of feathers.
Once a poet peered inside the hollow
of a tree and discovered words,
and now I steal from him, repeat
his curved consonants, the illusion
of presence. In the secret,
dim light I run my hands over
the carcass of some dead creature
he might have seen
still heaving its last sighs.

A window knows nothing
of the sorrows of speech,
the weight of things breaking
as wind carries them away
from tongue. Darkness
moves against darkness,
night dresses its sleepy body
in shadows, whispers its stories,
and my window speaks
what it sees. While I see
only what is spoken:

A poet peers inside a tree and sees
carvings across the corridors of a temple.
I walk down a temple’s corridors
and see the silhouette of a crow,
many feathers, a door
swinging idly in its jamb. I see
wide windows and leaves fluttering
in their furtive language. Leave
me be, then, so that I may speak,
and you may see. The curtains are drawn,
and so let the sounds call forth things,
and let them break, let their shards
wound our ears.
Let all things broken
heal as they please.