How a Bird Carries

You were small then, a nestling
still snug in my arms. In the sky
a bird, birds, a great family, and you
would point a tiny finger out into the welcoming blue,
trying out all the names we had taught you—
tee! teee-ee!—you would call with your little bird mouth,
the word tree had become bird had become teee-ee!, wild
to wild, an animal psalm, the first prayer.
                                                 Oh, lost language
we all once knew—how a bird carries in its being nest
carries tree carries light into blue into sky, every name for home
all of a piece, one chord one chorus one sound.