Remember That The Heart Leaves The Blood Unchanged Valentine

I don’t yet know
enough to save them
but a bird came to my window
so I wouldn’t get discouraged
and now there’s a black fungus
on the Franciscan monk
who discovered these leaves
in song as in disease he
saw a snake eating
his own feet not
normally where they
belong on some infinitely
distant shore but walking
as if in self-cognition
who said he wanted more
self to swallow more dying
to be born.