Triumvirate

Each day is a triumvirate: three winning beasts: the first (but
not least) of the second and third is the luminous bird that awakens
at four when it flies through an avian doorway of consciousness

towards a predawning translucence of birdybrain thought –
which by noon it has wrought into filigree silvery musical trills
which it spills into air – which transmutes to the lair that the second

contender – the bear – burrows into to nap – who, after eight hours
of being a bird, is delighted to gird and curl up in one place
for a change: the range of a lap of a redolent somnolence in which

the echoes of birdsong can ripple like fresh gentle splashes
in rapids, whose proddings soon rouse the bear out of his sleep,
send him deep into unexplored patches of woods to dig roots, seize

and grab in the trees at berries, small mammals, then catch
leaping fish from the falls, enjoying their bloody and terrified wriggles
and squalls as their effluent beings leak out of his paws – work

hungrily done, the bear lumbers back to a clearing: he lunkily senses
he’s nearing the entrance, again, to the end and beginning of new
metamorphoses: eight o’clock: funky time! monkey tme! – enter

the ape, the spry primate presuming anew to morph out of the bear –
and his blunt ursine view – daring to sneak into realms you and I lack
the guts and the stamina even to peek at – the sleek little simian

rat piques and rattles his simian aptitudes – snatches, manipulates
up, down, around, over, under the vines with which he must
consort and divine through the night, ‘til he turns into purplish lines

of a dream, which turns into the scheme that turns into the bird
who flies out of the dark night’s large herd of delights, once again,
right at four. Each day is a bird, bear and monkey – and more.

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