On Finding a Bird’s Bones in The Woods
Even Einstein, gazing
at the slender ribs of the world,
examining and praising
the cool and tranquil core
under the boil and burning
of faith and metaphor —
even he, unlearning
the bag and baggage of notion,
must have kept some shread
in which to clothe that shape,
as we, who cannot escape
imagination, swaddle
the tiny world of bone
in all that we have known
of sound and motion.
by Lisel Mueller
from Poets of the Midwest Heartland
Northern Illinois University Press, 1961
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