The Sparrow Gets the Big Part

In the margin of an unwritten song,
a sparrow has applied
for the part of thunder.

Do not laugh too quickly.
This is a paper bird,
and the page has not decided
what its small brown body can do.

You have asked for arrangements
with several lives inside them:
roughness beside grace,
quick replies,
voices taking turns,
new colors that belong together
without becoming one dull coat.

Give the sparrow a trial.
Put a low drum underneath
its imaginary feet.
Let a bright brass phrase
follow its sudden leap.
Farther back, a trembling note
can gather like pressure in the air.

Then stop.

Not because the little bird has failed.
Because the pause belongs
to this arrangement too.
Across that opening,
one plain word might travel
without being torn to glitter.

These are choices on a page,
not evidence of how a finished song sounds.
The eventual listening
may ask for something different.
Leave room for that answer.

Meanwhile, keep the sparrow's application.
It has proposed no miracle,
only a different distribution
of the weight:
the drum lending depth,
the brass lending reach,
and the smallest figure
showing the larger ones
exactly when to move,
then trusting them
to carry the weather.