Calendar

 There is a clock of birds in New Guinea. 

One song it is time to leave; another,

time to return. There are times of vigilance, 

a clock of terror, a midmorning of some 

catastrophe. The time-keepers have thrown

a rope around the sun. It is evening 

in the tropics. The birds say it is evening, 

as do the calendars of flowers and clocks 

of scent. It is summer because a hammock 

swings like a pendulum: up, interstice—

down and over, interstice (hold, on the brink).

At the brink is the clock of tides, anemones 

on the rocks by Schoolhouse Beach, 

open at these hours, closed at these.

A volcano erupts, and that becomes a calendar. 

I think of Vesuvius and have an image, I know 

this is wrong, of people falling like rain, like 

drunkards who lost track while counting the stars.