There’s a bird that comes

There’s a bird that comes to perch
on the dead cherry—

Is it the same that returns each day;
was it a man or a woman once,

a child, a snail, a blind ascetic
walking through the hills?

The sound it makes is dull percussion
on the side of a hollow bowl.

Is it the same, but now a winged soul
that troubles the wood

all through the year? A landmark:
pocked, scarred, familiar—

Safe in the relative way we
ourselves return,

to seek the ghosts of previous
hungers; then striking out

again for all that green, still
achingly out of reach.

In response to an entry from the Morning Porch.