Hands shading eyes,
I follow the high flight:
honoring heaven, the bird
traverses
the transparency, without soiling the day.
Winging westward, it climbs
each step up to the naked blue:
the entire sky is its tower,
and the world is cleansed by its movement.
Though the violent bird
seeks blood in the rose of space,
its structure is
arrow and flower in flight
and in the light its wings
are fused with air and purity.
O feathers destined
not to tree, meadow, or combat,
or to the atrocious ground
or sweatshop,
but to the conquest
of a transparent fruit!
I celebrate the sky dance
of gulls and petrels
attired in snow
as though I had
a standing invitation:
I participate
in their velocity and repose,
in the pause and haste of snow.
What flies in me is manifest
in the errant equation of those wings.