Читать книгу Everything We Always Knew Was True - James Galvin - Страница 7

A Thousand and One Avatars

It appeared like a bullet hole

In the day-lit stratosphere

That leaked a bright

White light.

Then it began

To approach us

Where we stood next

To the open palm

Of a lake.

It whirled to the north

And came down

Like a comet’s tail,

Then like a cloud of frost,

Slowly lofting,

A fuzzy galactic avatar.

Then we could tell it was birds,

Wings set, hovering

And flipping like pages

Of news in wind.

Then it was

White pelicans

With nine-foot wingspans,

And we saw the black-tipped

Remiges

Of the largest of boreal birds

Coming to rest

On our modest lake

In their ordained sortie

From Florida, the Gulf Coast,

And Panama,

To their home in British Columbia.

It was a pod,

Then a squadron,

Then a scoop,

As their wings became parachutes,

And they water-skied in.

There must have been a thousand of them,

Veering and banking

To avoid collisions.

Some luffed,

Waiting their turn.

It took an hour

For them all to come down

And fold their wings

And huddle in the middle

Like a melting ice floe.

They bore spikes for beaks,

And their necks hooked

Like shepherds’ crooks.

And then I thought

Of the blind man

I’d seen in the market

In a small village

In Italy,

Where this sort of thing can occur,

His open palm of bills,

All folded and tucked

Like origami,

Creased in different shapes

(Someone must have done this

For him),

Triangles, rectangles, squares,

So he could tell their

Denominations.

A door opened,

And a wind scattered his currency.

All the people knelt

To gather his geometries

And return them

To his hand.