I’m sick with these

sour assumptions of
just what vinegar’s willing
to bend in the face
 
of a frenzied driver, 
fizzling envy of old
Lao tzu now sated, at last,
with saying the world is exactly that
 
or this—should it make any difference—i hear
 
the thrush song 
broken Dvorak dandled
to bristling symphony 
seized in the seizing
sole, stuck smudging 
American soil to something
more than mere tantruming amber—i hear
 
the thrush song
threshing the feathers
and firs for what
we’ll conclude
 
was the other
some armchair 
songster splintered 
in prose—i hear
 
the thrush song
tucked in toddlers’
toes tapped, rapping
the morse code codas of
forebears frantically 
thrashing at slackening 
seams, to cinch or sleave or
free or aggrieve them, sour 
 
assumptions thumbing the putty-
grey lip of a glib passerby like snow
shocks box homes into Dickensian 
hamlets or somebody, spluttering, teases at 
trauma or shell-shock, God 
only knows what 
excitement just might
summon such a skipping affliction