Once I Could Say

Once I could say
my loyal friend, the house wren.
I might even sing to him.
Did I not hear the beatific,
the breathlessness –
a patter shaking the tamarind pod,
the bright green feathery foliage
stammered by a breeze?
Those muttering implosions,
did nothing intend them?
Is the harp, too, obsolete?
When the wren took his awl
to the infested branch
he fed me an idea there.

Ira Sadoff