Declaration

Hidden,
in the wind
like the sun hidden in the clouds that chill me,
I preside over all.
I bestow myself to the curves of a swallow's flight,
to the duels of the hummingbird,
and the thoughts of a hawk,
skillfully riding the currents, motionless and still.
I give of myself to the parts of this world,
never-seen,
the parts stripped bare--
raw and bleeding before the wanton gazes.
I bequeath all I know to the clouds before me, everything that I am,
fast and floating,
ominous and beautiful and
full
of electric discharges.
I found this love and this world and I am established in it.
Here,
all is touched by me, and all is myself--
and the whisper of a bloodsong two-thousand feet away,
the heady breaths of the predators, the crack of a bone in the night,
also this I give, because this is myself.
I know this tattered plastic,
frayed and gibbering, a ghost of the pain,
the fire-touched tree, the rust-greaved iron,
the broken tooth,
the midnight moment,
the winged flury
that is an owl whose eyes see all.
I am the wind,
I am the dove,caught and struggling against greenhouse glasses,
and I preside.
I give of myself, and I know this self.
I bequeathe of my raiment,
I understand,
and even pain and beauty, striking, threatening,
my life as pain and beauty,
this world lives, and it is me,
and I am of this world