after Are We Listening? by Rebecca Carlton & the grounds of Write On, Door County
make it a circle of word bird loss
make it multiple flock flight fold
make space for shadow
more shadow than circle
make it small enough to hold in hand
make it big enough to circle the world
circle the world
center the missing
listen to silence
& lost language
& no language
& the language of gesture
make it a conversation
ask for names
make it a hanging cage
without a bottom its bent
bars covered with scraps
of torn mesh above a pair
of rusted typewriters
on rock their keys locked
make it a chicken coop
collage the door with
metal bits & coffee pots
make it a gallery in the woods
a gathering of weathered bears &
bird houses built from salvaged
barns a garden of clay & craft
of buddhas & deer
make it a stand of ash for vireo
to hide among singing &
singing to a long-abandoned
car still falling apart
make places to rest
make it a hanging cup nest
to lay a clutch of ten in march
make it roofed & insulated
with a thousand feathers
make the walls from moss
& spider silk & lichen flake
design it to fail
if someone wants
takeaways the big picture
ask which one ask whose
the big picture—
it was the robin its roundness
on a roof ridge and the shape
of the negative a shrug opening
to sky a single line small presence
leaning against absence
that drew me
