A Couple Months After My Father’s Death, I Read About Songbirds Mysteriously Dying in Pennsylvania

What does this life require
of me. A constellation
of sharp caution empties: embers
crackle in a nearby firepit. Textured
branches seduce the night, consider
this was all you ever thought
desire could be: planted calm and the arrival
of darkness. Always someone running
the hills. Always a creek, yearning. What
scrapes the inside of my wrist, what thorn
bush caught in the understory rises,
what is left—my father taught me
to trust in the attempt: wake up, begin,
follow some semblance of caught joy:
eggs over-medium, a horse gasping oats
from your flat palm, driving across
a bridge, suspended,
tasting air, a pronounced grin to anyone
in the service of a second.
I ask again: what does this life require
of me. In the imprint of the landscape
Sycamore trees raise the question to a slotted
sky with absent blues: how long can a body
search for what has been taken; this loss
I wish to escape makes a nest in my chest:
above me, goldfinches are threading
what little they can unearth: pine needles,
bark, bits of trash, discarded feathers.