A gray bird with a crest and a black mask.
Gilt edges the slim
tail feathers.
An eye drop of arterial blood in a flask
of gray water is the flashing red
under the wing.
A large wader, gimlet-eyed, under
the sun’s gimlet eye,
spearing frogs in the cattail
marsh. The sun itself a larger bird,
its wings manufacturing
the solar wind
that devours, that is what can devour a person—
floating in the vacuum
of perpetual space,
which is what there is and also is
itself a bird, a blackbird,
its black eye, black in black,
its sidewise look that makes you
look back.