there were many don'ts:  pirates, maidens, deer
resembling Bambi.  And we were urged to be ourselves,
or selves, that is, who knew birds.
And if we had the nerve to begin
with a peer through a key-hole
we knew what couldn't follow.  Trees

had names, in other words--
Texas mulberry, one-seed juniper--
it was time to learn them.  And to steal
from cormorants, admire our shadows, sing.
To make sure, if our speaker drives a Kharman Ghia
a semi destroys it.  Pay attention

to your neighbor's yard, he said, juncos
plump in the rain.  Beware of what you hate:  the reddest
redneck loves.  Listen

to chirping (rooms of industrious
typists, deep-pitched jug-o-rums, fingernails
running the teeth of combs).  Observe the slowly
opening tulip (once it reveals its mysterious black,
it's over).

Rip the ring from your ear, the parrot
from your shoulder, unveil
the innocent, dismantle the fawn.
Find the bird that drums its wings
like a car that won't turn over,
spend a year with Preston's Trees.

There is a toad, Henry, distant chorus
a diesel engine, engine you taught us
runs on compression.  There is a bird,
ten years after the mill shut down,
still whirring like a circular saw.

On a warm night in early March, lost
in a maze of gray apartments, fooled you're far
from what sings, strains your ears.
This increases the odds.

But I hear them, Henry,
and you're right:  it isn't a ribit,
any more than a creeper's a seeseelookatme.

You will fail most of the time.
Mostly, you will fail.
You will find yourself driving
in circles, buildings marked A, B, C . . .
you will long to knock on a door.
Always there will be singing you can't
put a name to--petals so perfect they drop.