Cactus Seed

Radiant notes     piercing my narrow-chested room,     beating down through my ceiling -     smeared with unshapen     belly-prints of dreams     drifted out of old smokes -     trillions of icily     peltering notes     out of just one canary,     all grown to song     as a plant to its stalk,     from too long craning at a sky-light     and a square of second-hand blue.     Silvery-strident throat -     so assiduously serenading my brain,     flinching under     the glittering hail of your notes -     were you not safe behind... rats know what thickness of... plastered wall...     I might fathom     your golden delirium     with throttle of finger and thumb     shutting valve of bright song.     II     But if... away off... on a fork of grassed earth     socketing an inlet reach of blue water...     if canaries (do they sing out of cages?)     flung such luminous notes,     they would sink in the spirit...     lie germinal...     housed in the soul as a seed in the earth...     to break forth at spring with the crocuses into young smiles              on the mouth.     Or glancing off buoyantly,     radiate notes in one key     with the sparkle of rain-drops     on the petal of a cactus flower     focusing the just-out sun.     Cactus... why cactus?     God... God...     somewhere... away off...     cactus flowers, star-yellow     ray out of spiked green,     and empties of sky     roll you over and over     like a mother her baby in long grass.     And only the wind scandal-mongers with gum trees,     pricking multiple leaves     at his amazing story.