Invisible Birds

I am sick in the mornings;
A time of waking. Timid morning sounds,
The birds in the lower branches; the shadowy violence
Of squirrels–they bark down the young trees.
They scatter at once when silence breaks sound,
And the branches are wraiths to the rising light,
Waving shadows on the rooms already dim.

When what is in me is reduced to lighting,
I can go only backwards, past dawn—
To where grey shapes are moving on a screen,
Or—I slept imageless last night.