Melody Not To Be Sung in My House

I asked you for a song about life
in lieu of a winter bouquet, aspiring to bolster your
mood. For thirteen months you've floated upon
fade-light dreams you poured into the aquarium
beside your bed. You've heard the poems
of the starfish. But Dante you would rather
buy me my thousandth cluster of red mums
than sing me what you hear. Rather give me
some less world-weary tribute
than describing dreams, how they swamp you
with their swells like knowledge and air,
from the psychiatrist who pontificates
about the drowned muse,
to the psychic on the Oprah show
divining my rank purple cells with his eyes.

These are the days when birds come back
    After a line by Emily Dickinson

They say migrating birds cannot forget
the trees of springtime. To the heart adheres
a detailed painting in primary colours,
a sense-landscape mapped as if to target
with radar-like skill that maple branch
beside your window (illiterate genius
which birds acquire meekly, not questioning,
when the sun chills). Discern the patter,
song's whirring core and cast off the layers:
snows numbness, the silence of gone.
Grey and white gardens spark with flickers −
cardinals, russet-breasted robins, blue jays −
light as breath on birch and oak, recalling nests
of string and twig woven into home.