I want the cure for ordinary
days. Once I searched for it
in a bottle, drank my way
to oblivion but always woke
up where I’d begun, hung-over,
scraping for seeds in the bird
feeder like all the other lost
souls on Monday morning,
scratching for millet, torturing
the plastic tray that was painted
brown to resemble wood; but
the birds and I were not fooled
and we flew off into the grey
skies of an old city, where
smoke from a million fires
greyed the horizon. These days
I worship in the church of the ordinary
with its miracles of bright days
and nights so full of stars
my heart cannot contain them–
those stars I loved as a child,
I have found again in old age,
little jeweled and shining creatures
that brightly swarm through history.
