Friday, July 27, 2007

Waxwings

Four Tao philosophers as cedar waxwings
chat on a February berrybush
in sun, and I am one.

Such merriment and such sobriety---
the small wild fruit on the tall stalk---
was this not always my true style?

Above an elegance of snow, beneath
a silk-blue sky a brotherhood of four
birds. Can you mistake us?

To sun, to feast, and to converse
and all together---for this I have abandoned
all my other lives.


---Robert Francis

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