I feel peeled, coffin-ripped.
The worms of night sated now.

My spectacled eyes
tender as incubated babes.

Elms hang infant leaves
like minuscule laundry.

At a bus stop, a bird walks
high in a tree’s new fringe,

pecking, sashaying
up the limb skyward.

It pauses to call “chip-chip”
into the Morse-code morning.

Soon, someone replies,
“chip-chip.” The bird saunters

out on the attenuating branch,
then steps into air.

What soldier, what saint
will I be in this new life?