At five AM, or thereabouts, when eastern light is falling,

and perhaps a crescent moon is hanging there

amid the waning black of night, the early robin’s calling,

wakes up the day with a singular air,

 

and wakes up my mind beyond my dreams,

to the robins and the robins in our sky,

and I began to be a robin, or so it seems,

imagining what it is to nest and fly.

 

Their song is the same but does not repeat,

a melody that has no notes, but calls

to some primordial ghost of self complete.

To what or whom this message falls?

  

Not me, nor any ear I know suspended in the wood,

save that of other robins here about,

and they are silent in their nest and could

not move, nor answer in song or shout.

 

The nest, creation from ancient ways unknown,

so neatly made, as basket for new birds,

I could not make with all the skills I own;

this magic is not had by using words.

 

And yet it sits among the trees above,

and rain and wind do not unwind its weave,

and I cannot unwind its basic love,

the questions of a million nests to leave.

 

The robin struts and hops across our lawn,

its gilded eye to earth and sky  is fixed,

and in the evening or at dawn

my mind is with the robin mixed.

 

The simple and the complex move about,

red breasted and aloof from all I know,

this creature, could it have the mind to shout

would call me fool for what I have to show.

 

While clamoring to live in this my nested home,

and not with mother robin bringing need,

I sit and wonder while it finds alone,

what earth have given it to feed.

 

Ancient formulae decide the rules of genes

that migrate here and there to make,

the flower and the grub, and means

for all our thirsts to slake. 

 

But robins, here upon our lawn this day,

their tokens of life displayed in song,

remind me of coincidence at play,

that made me human, and made me wrong

 

since I think too much about the nest that sways

suspended in the wind and rain,

that it might fall and end its days

upon the earth in death and pain,

 

while the robin goes about it all

in flight and song and feeding care,

without remorse for natures call,

that of the wind and rain: beware!

 

I envy this, the robin bird, its beauty and its flight,

among the trees and on the lawn

so intimately regarded in its sight,

it sings all night until the dawn.