March 6

Dawn, and along with the mug of Kona coffee, prayers, and bird chatter,
anticipation of the day that will bring me up the Georgia mountains,
the pretty little town.

There I will stop at my office before driving to the home of a man
with advanced AIDS...just beginning a new expirimental protocol of treatments.

The car will smell of rosemary that I clipped yesterday to bring him...a cook...
and others both to dry and to start: dipped in rooting hormone and stuck in Perlite
filling the holes of an old red brick that matches the wall built in 1957.

So, despite the visit to the peach trees with their lovely peachy blooms, the mood
is somewhat somber and already I have heard the call of the black birds.
The river is moving.
The blackbird myst be flying.
And, lastly, our despair at death:
It was evening all afternoon.
. . .
The blackbird sat
In the cedar limbs.

Hopefully, finding someone with whom to have lunch
then I will drive back down the hill 70 miles north of here

and return to the peach trees and pull the rye grass from around their trunks
to expose the white and purple pansies planted in November.

If the day had more flowers and fewer blackbirds....