Playing the Flavors

Waiting for hot stock to cool
I hear acoustic guitar rifts
escaping the speakers
tucked earlike behind
the widescreen monitor

my sunshine window in
the misty night of bud-opening
the plumskinned hours

when blue-as-you’ve-always-heard
the robins’ eggs touch
the tomato breast of life
warm feather comforter
tapping heartbeats
through the fragile shell

instructions on how to be a bird
how to build a beak
grow feathers

all night the red breast
keyboards the beating lingo
of forming a body
from a yolk
while I prep the pot lift
and strain spent bones
from one stainless pan
to another

through the tall
cone colander
with three feet

all the notes of thyme
parsley and sage play
above the cascade

celery carrot rutabaga
float abstract as acoustic
jazz on the surface

the rooms fill up
with rising stock
molecules
simmering in the heat
drifting back where I write

I can taste the air

reminding me
a bird died so I can
have this stock

this liquid passage
creature to creature
be fully aware

when birds choose
to live as neighbors.