There’s a brightness folded into every bird

but the bird doesn’t know it. The bird is thirty birds who soared
out of dreaming to invent sky, thirty birds flying in the formation

of a bird. God tells them, Open, O moon-beak O silver-black O sliver
of luck, and the bird says, Break me until I’m whole. God says, Empty,  

and the bird spills a splendor of jewels from their thirty beaks into
the valley. Don’t think I’m a diamond, God says, Find me, and hands

the bird a map back to the inside of its own bone, then disappears.
But the bird doesn’t understand the quest(ion). Thirty birds split

into a thousand that search under everything—stone, fabric,
sun-face, gold—until they find no God. Now the beak yells, Take  

me; I have no reason, and an arch of wing lifts sun-up towards light,
and a thump under the chest answers, Yes and yes and yes and yes.