Birdhouse

1.

The paws at the rump of my skull
are too many.

I’d be like a gold camel, who takes only sips
at the water, and seldom.

2.

Here, there’s a birdhouse across the pulled water,
behind the felled tree

that dipped in a windstorm
that howled like an eagle.
Gold eagle.

3.

Napoleon sits, wears his laurels. He rots
in Vermont, in a stoop or a hamlet.

He’s mushed like the leaves
resting under the birdhouse.

The leaves resting under gold water.

4.

I say, “Would you screech, blind canary, or fluff
like the gadflies I’ve seen all my life?

I haven’t the lip or the pelt for it, no,
I haven’t the hollow, prone, legible bones.”