I set out a bowl
for the pepper birds.
“Pepper birds,”

In a city where I once lived, for many years
an old man sat on his doorstep, in his hand
a brown facecloth, which he turned
over and over, smoothed out

Ah, to rise one morning
With the ability
To strum a guitar

Last night
At Mother Tomas’,
We danced the

Today is beautiful the birds singing
in the trees where they have landed or in the air when
they are going, the sun wrapping its fingers

A cold rainy March morning came.
Two birds woke up and saw the sun
that comes up every morning

To take up where you left off!
without a breath of separation
your new movement is begun.

A courtier strides along, his feathers
straightening in the breeze. His boon
has been denied. From his clenched left

Oh night, to hear them once again
as if we were at Kyriena’s and the moon
over the Hudson were blue no movie

You may flaunt my looseness, you know
that I go whole weeks without, so, I
get depressed because I’m so easily distracted