While it was happening,

                            the absolute
not me of it, the all

                       of a sudden see

through wirer of wings beside me

                                    that the late sun
just as I looked up

                   turned into a hovering
flash, a watery grey

                      green iridescence
as the beak dipped into

                      a funnel of blossom,

dipped and was gone,

                      and not even

the blossom's white
                          tip bent in its going,

or shivered

While this, which could have happened

                     without me,

 here or elsewhere, happened the way

                     it did, and would
continue happening

                    for others,

for no one,
                        for nothing but the blind urge

of its happening,
                        this ever transient

accidental,

                      crossing of momentum's

that was, in this case,
                      beautiful

 but could

                 have not been and so
seemed all the more consoling

                 for the thought

even the thought of death,

                just then, consoling,
shaping itself inside me

                 as the now there
now not there hovering

                of bird,

 flower, late
                    sun iridescence's

beloved singers,
                    you who in the aftermath

surged from the shadows
                   to sing in your different voices

the same song.

              Route of evanescence,

Mother of beauty,

              It avails not, time nor place,

distance avails not,

                  if you had known, just then,

three hundred miles
                  away, in another state,

that one of the nurses
                  getting my brother up

from the commode
                 and back to bed,

the one who held him on
                 his left side, the dead side,

all of a sudden
               lost hold of him and, as

he fell hard, grabbed
              for the loose papery gown

and ripped it off,

               so that he lay there naked,

utterly exposed

               beloved singers,

 tricksters of solace,

              if you had known this, seen

this, as I did not,

              you would have offered him

no sumptuous
             destitution, no fire-finagled feathers,
or blab about death as being

         luckier than one
supposes.

        You would have bowed

your heads, you would
            have silently slipped back

   into the shadows

out of which you surged forth,

   singing to me.