all day I hear them our cardinals and their news is well it isn’t good that’s all I hear in their anxious chatter time lapsed Morse Code as though their tongues and throats were magicked into a metal thin enough to bend with the thumbs but sturdy enough to release a tinny ping an F sharp or a B and now I hear them typing on a rusty Underwood one choked note at a time as they build their place or whatever it is they've been doing all day which has been years ago in that barren canvas called Memory that turns years ago into right now don’t ask me why we don’t talk about it of course we're not the same we’re better calmer safer we don’t say not even mid-May anymore and not even halfway through another year now years removed from that dark crystal clear year that showed up sick and spent before any of us woke up listen earlier I called them our cardinals our cardinals our cardinals I never had the heart to say it like that before out loud among all you good people left what's happened to us is still happening listen it’s better to say our cardinals because they are because it is how we pray now
