The great blue heron’s tinctured swerve
fires its yellow bill with the trout’s alloy.
Why in place of nature cure

a fluency that betrays the tongued
compartments of the phonograph?
Year after year the white oaks

open to the gaze of passersby,
ibis, stork, and crane sharing
the half-light of stalls

and center aisles of their immunity.
These theatrical arrangements aggravate
the loss and literature of their climate,