The fingertips, when drawn to house a wren, are rib-bones, are bars

The fingertips, when drawn to house a wren, are rib-bones, are bars

Take nature first.  The word nature is from Latin natura, “birth,

constitution, character, course of things”—ultimately from

nasci, to be born.  So we have nation, natal, native, pregnant.

                Gary Snyder                                      

“The Words Nature, Wild, and Wilderness”

Maybe the agreement has nothing to do with flesh

and blood and all the concoctions that come

to the celebration of something fresh being made.

Maybe the agreement keeps mouthing the words

that ears and noses don’t know a thing about nor listening

nor sniffing so when the wind picks up everyone’s off guard.

Maybe the agreement was struck so long ago in deep time

before there were bones to be folded into skin before

there were feathery things and scaly things in air or sea.

Maybe the agreement is only recalled when prone, when

it all comes down to we need or have to and then whichever comes
first: to relax into this wind or this ice.  And there it is and take it

like the agreement our people, though never present for,

felt passed down to them like a reading of the will,

a legacy one can never refuse or run from there being such

A thing as gravity though like the agreement that has let the rules
be, if not changed, at least stretched, there being some distance 

between the first draw and the last, the carrying it home straw.