Open Window

Nothing to hold fast to. A strange bird’s song—
gold needle, gold thread—
slips through its own weaving. It’s as if,
eased by the indolence of the day,
even words have lost their thickness.

Children anchored to kite strings: how their voices rise
in that vowel-long other language
which has the sound of a river without banks,
while the native tongue in my head
barks and fidgets behind its dense shrubbery.