After a good rain, goldfinch string
their music through the serviceberry trees.
My wife thinks she’s Saint Francis.
She charms the cedar waxwing,
which lights close enough to touch.
She tells me Francis’ theory of containers,
Take from the full, fill the empty.
This works for her, the music of birds,
a song from Francis, and all those nests
the shape of cupped hands waiting.

The celebration begins tomorrow.
No one will settle for candles and cake.
Distance between us is metered in marks
where people have stepped out of their lives.
Melissa gave up a child and her apartment
over the store. Little things mean more
than they should. Starlings are in the fig trees.
People on 27th painted a brick house white.
A neighbor, the surgeon, races up the alley
as if some god will mend any child struck.
Tomorrow they will hang the flags in Old Town.
Nothing frees my sleep of the man racing
after his bus. He waves one hand, his raincoat
no more help than the briefcase banging his knee.
The driver always sees him and continues.
No flag unfurls here. I snap clean the rug
that announces the bunker’s entrance.
Today I practice my basement anthem.
Its refrain sounds best against concrete walls.
Nothing explodes or sparkles in this dark.
I keep safe a place for children, for the first lost dog.