Your birds have gone silent since they gobbled
	small quartz stones that jeweled the ditch bank.

Now they no longer scavenge for bugs or corn, but slouch
	on fence poles, eyeing the scales of rust that feather

the blade of my shovel. The neighbor’s dog sings
	the pitch and key of every siren night releases

once tools have been filed away and birds are folded
	in the branchy cover trees provide.

With no sound to serve as guide, a compass will
	be invented from stars, the moss-bearded north

face of trees. And birds try to work the kernel-sized stones
	from their throats as dawn lifts itself,

the color of a blister, out of the long silence
	of mud. If you are walking then

you might hear one head-cocked bird, then another,
	commence the music only they own, a chorus

they relearn by opening their throats wide enough
	to let the stones that choked them fall

and unleash the broken notes they can offer only when
	their shadows make grace notes on the ground.

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