First Things - Where the Sky Is

Not that light falls unbroken
like snow falling on snow

but that the sky flies open
like an eye. Today, an astonishment

of blue and one gray scissortail
who is sharpening his passion

for heights. When did motion become
invisible? Faster than my retina

can think wingblur this ribbon
of plumage, this swashbuckler

with his dabs of red, this uproar,
this bullet explodes up a spine

of air. Where the sky is,
a clear pandemonium as he tumbles,

climbs toward the sun, tumbles, climbs
and tumbles. He flirts with

brilliance. His feathers oppose
his backward somersaults like thumbs

as his throat opposes the silence
with lines of raucous skrees like dashes,

high-pitched cackles and rolls
he repeats like a creed:

I believe in noise,
I believe in the courtship of light,

I believe in the dance,
the dance, always the dance.