To the Brown Thrasher


Weft over warp, twill seams
a route to and onward. Listen!
He stops and starts in thicket,

fairly high, in and out, to a couplet
of elderberries across her chest, maybe; my

sense isn’t what it was. But even his song
smears over stops and starts
as a reminder:
territory wasn’t marked, land-
locked, but woven in a style.