After C.K. Williams
I am sitting in the park
crouching to spot a mockingbird,
this curious cross
between an opera star and car alarm,
when an old Chinese man—
a scarf his only plumage—
bends into his own song
of gesture, carving the waves
of air in a practice he too
knows by instinct. The mockingbird
senses a duel afoot,
and speaks in tongues,yet
the man transfixed
has found his order
in the nature of things,
leaning into the air
like a lover long gone
or newly returned—
what the mockingbird sings
so vociferously for.
