Birds come after me, as if

I were a walking tree.

I spread my crown for them,

like the mushroom in the Russian children’s tale

growing ever wider to shelter

birds and beasts from rain.

I grow many hands,

from the legs for the parrots,

from the hip for crows,

from the belly and the back

for the cranes, eagles,

kingfishers and  owls

and tiny twigs for

sparrows and treepies.

They fruit, my head opens out

like a tree top , and bats hang from them

undefined, between bird-ness and beastliness.

Birds come after me, as if

I were a walking tree.

I spread my crown for them,

like the mushroom in the Russian children’s tale

growing ever wider to shelter

birds and beasts from rain.

I grow many hands,

from the legs for the parrots,

from the hip for crows,

from the belly and the back

for the cranes, eagles,

kingfishers and  owls

and tiny twigs for

sparrows and treepies.

They fruit, my head opens out

like a tree top , and bats hang from them

undefined, between bird-ness and beastliness.

My hairs blossom, butterflies looking for honey

surround my head like a halo.

As I watch each bird turns into a letter:

an alphabet of birds.

The wind passes between them,

they make many noises,

order themselves into lines,

resound with suggestions,

change places, combine

to become something else,

sing and tell stories.

Vanished hills and forests

crowd their memory,

dried up pools and streams,

roofs and telephone cables

with  screams passing through them

and the scalding grammar

of electric current.

A tree is a dictionary of leaves.

My branches fill with poems,

the history of clouds*