Absence of Mind [Edit 2]

[dukealien]

@Apache -

Thank you very much for your kind and effective critique.  I've implemented your suggestions (the one about too many commas with a serious rearrangement and deflation of the first stanza).  This is the kind of criticism the poem needed to shed excess, non-essential baggage.

Edit 2

Afternoon, September sun;
head-deep in seedy shrubbery
over which loomed feeders
crewed by wary birds,
sky temperate, postcard-blue.
Standing there I dozed,
dazed by well-being,
absent of mind.

When I awoke,
three little birds, wrens, junco,
were pecking ‘round my feet,
as if a statue of St. Francis
had been erected in my absence,
and I was it.

Then picture him,
St. Francis, likewise, but
more gloriously rapt, not
by worldly forms alone,
but Immanence in all,
the wonder and its majesty.
He stands, stricken by
the great awe, absent of mind.

After time,
small birds begin, losing fear,
to pick brown woolen tufts
from Francis’ robe.
Gaining confidence, they,
in need of bindings for their nests,
start tugging grizzled hairs
from beard and monk’s-fringe
of the meditating man,
he, unaware, lost in delight.

Then, at the end, a crow, obsidian,
perched on his shoulder,
begins to covet
those vacant, glistening, tear-filled,
appetizing eyes.

Whereat the Spirit,
unready to collect its saint,
relents:  they blink,
his mind returns;
Francis smiles at Brother Crow.