Signal to Noise

The messages that ripple through the telephone lines
aren’t meant for me. The messages that come
via cable, DSL, satellite, aren’t meant for me. Nor are
the messages in the mailbox, the Personals, the flyers
left on the porch, the billboards lining the street.

There’s a message for me encoded in the dot-dot-dash
of crows spaced along the neighbor’s roofline.
There’s a message for me in the illegible calligraphy
of half-unraveled cobwebs in the wrought-iron railing.
There’s a message for me gurgling in the storm drain.

And if I send you a message,

look for it in the eyed pattern on a pheasant feather
or the shiny scrawl that the dawn light finds on the sidewalk
listen for it in the staccato rattle of falling pine cones
or the mournful hiss of tires on wet pavement at night
find it written in the scarlet ebb and flow and thump
inside your heart.