Being spoken from the earth's inside

The way a body opens
to hold a hundred singing birds
out beyond recall--
the love or limber hope
of my first body:

the way that girl's excitement held
both rage and wonder

the way I foretold violence
by a trembling in my core

I can't help my sentience
the way she knows
the unknowable
though for years I tried
to dam her stream

It was the custom here
to cry later
to mourn in a bedraggled moan
of remembered feathers

But now I know what's coming 
through a flush of warmth
of pleasure in my thrumming strings
when singing takes me
with no more breath to wonder
if it's safe

And it isn't;
and it is.

And meanwhile the birds
remember the future
and hold me in their
brazen throats

A singing that trusts
the law of its own song
​and the wind to carry it