As they aim their laser pens
over charts, ornithologists calmly explain
the slow, sloping descent
of neotropical migrants.
They open factual arms in dim rooms
to show the size of Ohio, puckering widows
and one dirty river become the yardstick
for South America's clear-cuts.
He would catch the yellow warbler
that clutched my hand today, its
song of hurried sweets.
As he broke his lines for the warm
tap of its heart, a hobo
would appear, wearing apologetic smiles,
and a boy with rusty hair,
a real deadeye, sighting
down a gleaming barrel for another
slurred silhouette.
Even the blips of northbound vireos
each spring along the branch between Americas
would cast in his lyric a green wing.
I heard him once, lone Ohioan
opening his throat
three thousand miles
from the gathering outlines
of his state. And when that yellow warbler
lay in my palm, thinned from its journey,
a breath of fierce light searching me
with one dark eye, I stood
as if I did not breathe
and only wind could move me.