Song birds enter the morning
the pre-dawn before the fires,
you know, when the night floats away
like vapor on a lake,
or like kisses in the woods.
Songs that even creation
might not remember.
Continuous, threaded, as if
a cherry pit were stuck
in the throat
to produce the trumpet of the branches.
So varies, yet never, changing
through all the days, since
reptiles fell to earth.
I give up the reason for the sound
I give up the creature of sound
and the creator of the creatures
and of us and of dawn and
air and of vacuum
and human inhumanity.
I give up the song.
I give up the place.
From The Collected Poems of Joseph Ceravolo (ed. Rosemary Ceravolo and Parker Smathers; Wesleyan University Press, 2013). The poem was chosen from The Nation by Terrance Hayes for The Best American Poetry 2014. For more about Joseph Ceravolo's Collected, click here.
beautiful to start my day
Posted by: Grace Cavalieri | June 20, 2020 at 09:04 AM
That's a mysterious little gem.
Posted by: Terence Winch | June 20, 2020 at 03:46 PM
a poem with beautiful singing
Posted by: Peter Bushyeager | June 30, 2020 at 08:16 PM