Poetry
Got a Bird that Whistles
by Allan Peterson
A small song floats over the reef of dishes in the sink.
If I love her, later we will catalog the moons.
I do, and so right off there are four out of the ordinary:
ours and three tonight of Jupiter counted by binoculars.
Then there are thousands, one for every ripple in the Sound
a universe of glass and reservoir of questions.
Moons, paper plates, some thick as dishes
some as dunes, softly as she answers to my hands.
Got a bird that wishes baby got a bird with springs
and I cannot count up these hours by birdsong
and cannot say baby since you are so deliciously full-grown
I can only listen quietly, dry the platters, ask.
I can only say swallows are the needlework of noon