Poem: "Changing Countryside"

We heard tonight we got the apartment. I wrote this rough draft to mark the occasion.


Changing Countryside

"Yes, this will be our house,
today I’m here to see it..."
—Alda Merini, “Roman Wedding,” trans. Susan Stewart

The ceiling is too high for the apartment
to make a cage, the living room too wide
to touch the heaving tips of feathered span,
the light too good not to be natural light.

But this high door locks out the open world
and locks security in. In closets, wings
will soon be folded, wrapped, and put away.
The window above the bed is made of steel.

I turn a faucet and, in the falling light,
a river runs to where it drains. I turn,
a beech opens its palm to act a desk.

And you, who by the light of metaphor
are the birdcatcher, are a bird, by me,
singing about the changing countryside.