In muddy heat a little down the bayou

In muddy heat a little down the bayou
grows a river oak. The sturdy tree
unfolds its leaves just like a song book
orchestrates tones. I hear across the pasture
the sleepy cows, above the floating birds
draw circles in the sky. Behind the house

are green beans, okra, my brother's clubhouse
with warping boards. Once the flowing bayou
crossed the road, only a nimble bird
could move over the land. Up in the trees
I hear them singing songs, in the pasture
I see them in formation. In the book

my grandma got about this place―a book
that tells the history of this earth, the houses
where fishermen lived, the prairies, pastures,
homesteaded dirt along the moving bayou―
are endless stories. We ran in the trees
behind the school, I called us little birds

because I always see two. Long-legged birds
were on the side of the road; the buried books
and photographs were soggy, the tall trees
gave shade to us as if they were the house
about us. She jumped into the bayou
in her underwear; beyond the pasture

is the lake, the gulf. In that same pasture
I see us making love―the flying birds
reflected on the surface of the bayou.
I put it in a song or in a book
and left it in the closet at the house.
She did the henna on my arm―a tree

curling outward, a broad and brown tree
giving shade to the cows in the pasture.
We made love in the grass behind the house
and wondered how the hollow bones of birds
tell them the weather. I read her the book
backwards, the Sun dipped into mirrored bayou,

we slept beneath the tree. A quick blue bird
rode heat above the pasture; my thin books
can't hold the house nor express the bayou.