This is a poem called, 'Learning to speak.
As a child running loose, I said it
this way, bird, bird a startled sound at field's edge.
The sound my mouth makes pushing away the cold.
So at the end of this quiet afternoon,
wanting to write the love poems I've never written.
I turn from the shadow in the Cottonwood
and say Blackbird, as if to you, there is the Blackbird,
Blackbird until its darkness is the darkness of a woman's
hair falling across my upturned face,
and I go on speaking into the night.
The Oriole, the flicker, the goldfinch.