[rehearsals]

A number of eastern phoebes chase each other across the yard, over the hedges, back and back again. Their movements are angular the way angles never appear in books. Recursive. They repeat themselves. Phoebe. Phoebe. The name we’ve lain on them recalls the Greek name for Diana, goddess of the moon. That name, too, recurs: as a Titan, a daughter, a nymph of the woods. They, too, transform themselves into glances, into rehearsals of the fields, the leaves, the monologues of clouds. Rehearsals are betrayals of memory as much as they mark its seasons. To write about these birds, their tiny beautiful brownness, their heads like tufted grapes, then, is to write a story about ghosts. A story of ghosts written by another.