The gate seemed darker, blacker, as if
a stranger painted it at night
or night left something in its leaving.
The courtyard swings embraced their loss; rickety eaves gathered nuts, leaves,
dead birds. There are so many birds.
I hear the maculate slap of over-
flowing birds during thunderstorms:
a parable or act of God.
Or God, I think, at intermission.
He rose with the house lights, applauded weakly, laid His program down and walked out to the muted rain-brushed streets where gas lamp replicas threw an orderly cosmos of light, where creatures with developing tastes slunk through the negative space to feast on the sudden architecture of birds.