Sunday Poem

Got a Bird that Whistles

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, 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 a reservoir of questions.

Moon, 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 and ask.

I can only say swallows are the needlework of noon