3.

The sparrow on the trough is world enough

As bright as any cardinal: it cannot swoop

Like a barnswallow, cannot glide like a gull,

Is not as exalted as a dove. It’s strange

How birds become signs in the mind, how they

Are projections of ideology,

Of love, riding the wind beyond ink,

Never left to their own devices. In writing

Of you, small, brown and plain, I feel the guilt

Of misrepresentation, not allowing you to be

As you are, to yourself and nature, a little

Like a poet writing to his love of his love.

Pictures and similitudes shroud the eye

That is a mirror that cannot see itself.