Ragged Scraps of a Draft of a Poem that Will Not End up Looking Like this Though All of it Might be in It

voices of birds

flight of voices of children

swimming

pulls itself up

buzzard from the side of the road

so slowly it seems walking

we wait

for something to happen—

a leaf rustles

clouds slip southward

I don’t know

why

the sun is low

so the stockade fence

appears around me

 

why these mockingbirds

spreading their tailfeathers

in the black locust?