Ses ailes de géant l’empêchent de marcher
—Baudelaire
No, Charles: we’re all in an airborne
pack, whirling widdershins around
the trawler, on the main chance.
Who needs lightfoot grace when we can bob
jauntily abreast the rollers, or hold our intrafamilial
squabble midair? Brownbreasted juvenile
cedes that fishgut scrap to his whitegowned auntie.
We’ve never heard of loneliness; we live
in a flying heap, a host, an involute skein
of wings. And even the albatross—
all right then—six months away from shore,
but every year the same island, every year,
same ungainly strut to the nest with the same
gray-eyed partner, shared charge of the sole pale egg.
