creation
   after Louise Glück
after the bird came to me,
pain came to me.
i was pleased to have a function
fit to the smooth and merciless form,
for pain is austere as a wing
and cyclical and tedious as migration.
then i gave them crying,
and a host of impossible languages.
B.J. Best lives in West Bend and teaches at Carroll University in Waukesha. "Creation" is from *Birds of Wisconsin*, forthcoming from New Rivers Press in Fall 2010. The poem was first published in *Georgetown Review*.
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