In this garden where roots build leaves and letters hang
like fruit from branches, where wind calls the world in
and Orpheus still makes trees and rocks dance

to his alder pipe, charming the dead, where silence,
mother of all, emerges from a hole in the ground,
sprouts in night like mushrooms from rotting logs,

and all around sways to eagle shin-bone whistles,
wingbeats of ravens and long-eared owls, where adagios
climb staves like scarlet runners, where I hum songs

from a world of whispers, count the heart’s irregular
iambic hoofbeats, watch a red balloon float behind
the belltower, hang there pulsing as long as I look.