I am alone, I put the ash flower
in the glass full of ripe blackness. Sister mouth
you speak a word that lives on outside the windows,
and what I dreamed climbs up me silently.

I stand in the bloom of the withered hour
and save up a drop of resin for a late bird:
it carries a flake of snow on a life-red feather;
the grain of ice in its beak, it will get through the summer.