Cedar Waxwings
Upstate South Carolina
Waxwings
By Robert Francis
(1901 - 1987)
Four Tao philosophers as cedar waxwings
chat on a February berry bush
in sun, and I am one.
Such merriment and such sobriety —
the small wild fruit on the tall stalk —
was this not always my true style?
Above an elegance of snow, beneath
a silk-blue sky a brotherhood of four
birds. Can you mistake us?
To sun, to feast, and to converse
and all together — for this I have abandoned
all my other lives.
