Unlike the song that I could sing,

if I had voice to make a song,

cold mist slips over red rock cliffs
and pours toward the valley floor
in falling streams of cloud-like veils.

In front of flowing mists cliffs jut
away from faces of the rock,
and sunshine lights afire the red
that burns the spirit of the rock alive.

The silence of the early morning song
is interrupted by the flash
of yellow on a black bird’s wings,
and then the liquid sound of birds
lifts from the valley’s desert floor

as mist slips over red rock cliffs
behind the sunfire streamed through clouds
into the pools of blackbird songs

unlike the song that I could sing.

Thomas Davis