WAXWINGS
              Robert Francis
                  p. 1960
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  Four Tao philosophers as cedar waxwings
  chat on a February berrybush
  in sun, and I am one.

  Such merriment and such sobriety--
  the small wild fruit on the tall stalk--
  was this not always my true style?

  Above an elegance of snow, beneath
  a silk-blue sky a brotherhood of four
  birds. Can you mistake us?

  To sun, to feast, and to converse
  and all together--for this I have abandoned
  all my other lives.

                        
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