He caught the singer in his hands before it sang,
slick, jumping-like-a-pulse thing in the small cave
his palms made, pliable, bird-boned, blinking other

before it could join the bark-hugging horde that issued,
call by call, day’s dirge, that issued evening, dusk:
the focalized riot of geese calls, then dark

and the susurrus of cupped wingtips cutting water,
a moon above detangling itself from pines, its light
like spilled scales across the lake, like the liquid

incarnation of a god whose first commandment is
release: and so he did, the little live thing, back into
a world that begs to be breathed, not remembered.