Headdress

    Stravinsky's Firebird,
    Debussy's La Mer
    lilting arrangement like a windmill
    with a little Hottentot of a bird
    scurrying over leaves
    like hot coals,
    nest a pudding arrangement,
    oven-shaped,
    dappled with a string.

    She is alternatively
    lady of the green shoots,
    Empress of an Andes of twigs
    for this cow-pie upended
    between trees
    is fortress and manor,
    blockhouse and Maginot Line
    careening between the branches
    much as a sloth
    toe ambles
    across the roof of a forest
    gingerly stepping on noise,
    clinging to velvet footpads,
    sitting between shadows
    within the roar of a clearing.