A bird flew out of my mouth.

“A bird flew out of my mouth”, my wife said,

when I busped (half burp/half sigh),

an exaltation of larks,

a pause, stop, dash;

a murder of crows,

(probably chihuahan raven,

the way my dog barked at me

and questioned mark her body,

maybe reading herself

in the onomatopoeia

of unknown syllables);

a dole of mourning doves,

commas ascending the sky,

until the chipmunk,

a few short of a scurry

(maybe, maybe not,

I could not see what

was inside or beneath its burrow.)

never hearing me utter a sound,

much less recite a nature poem,

popped its head above

a sentence of Tennessee clay,

its body stiff as an exclamation mark,

wondering why the flight

of language had stopped.