Song for the Song of the White-throated Sparrow Poem by Don McKay

Before it can stop itself, the mind
has leapt up inferences, crag to crag,
the obvious arpeggio. Where there is a doorbell
there must be a door- a door
meant to be opened from inside.
Door means house means- wait a second-
but already it is standing on a threshold previously
known to be thin air, gawking,
stricken with illicit possibility. The Black Spruce
point to it: clarity
becomes us, melting into ordinary morning. True
north. Where the sky is just a name,
a way to pitch a little tent in space and sleep
for five unnumbered seconds.