Night Migration
Songbirds sit in the high branches
and wait the whole afternoon
for darkness to drop down
like a coat sliding from a hanger.
Some think they follow the stars,
or magnetic pull from the poles.
Others believe they avoid predators
that roam the light sky.
During peak migration,
uncountable birds glide above
while we sleep, tracing the seam
between firmament and dirt.
At night I dream of a house
with the smell of coulton pine
drifting in through the windows.
Outside, a grove frames
the view to another country,
though I have yet to find it.
Small Margins
It turns out chaos theory is a misleading name.
Chaos implies complete disorder,
but chaos theory points to an underlying
pattern, too complicated for us to predict,
which brings me to my son’s love for hockey.
Static air between players at face-off
can shave the reaction time, lead to an edge
for one player over another.
The curve of a stick as it lifts the puck
can slip a spin the defenseman doesn’t see.
If the other team pulls the goalie,
time to attack the puck and go,
but with so many variables at play
the outcome of the game remains unknowable
until it actually happens. Excitement
I’m told, is the same emotion
as anxiousness. Both would be lost
should chaos give way.
One thousand hours of edgework,
drills, shooting practice and speed—
the faith of small margins, trails
cut in the ice underneath the blade.
Watching the Bald Eagle Live Nest Cam
all this week has been a thrill.
An eagle pair, coupled for years,
have yet to raise a baby to fledging.
Three eggs hatch into improbable dust motes
nesting atop a pine tree near an alpine lake.
After a storm, only two remain.
What does anyone get from wanting—
I want them to live! I want to believe
things get broken for redemption.
Mother eagle sits atop the nest
looking at the middle distance,
she feeds the remaining chicks.
I never thought about how many hours
of life is waiting until I begin watching
the Bald Eagle Live Nest Cam.
I tend to invent disasters and brittle battles
that haven’t happened. Today I see
she feeds them a fish she has caught,
feed them a fish she has caught,
and from these moments, pluck slender happiness.
Opposition
Imagine looking through Lowell’s telescope,
feeling your eyes widen at the alien canals
crisscrossing the Martian landscape.
With the planet in opposition in 1877
astronomers swear they see them flowing,
and reversing, depending on the view.
Lowell would give the channels names,
draw maps to trace what shifts in the lens.
Many offered theories—were these artifacts a last
attempt at survival by some advanced culture,
were they merely streaks of dust on the glass?
How strange these vast constructions, seen
best when conditions were blurry, faded
when the atmosphere grew clear and still.
By 1909 technology supplied new magnification
that reduced the canals to optical illusions—
sunspots and craters that joined in the hopeful eye.
Lowell refused to unsee what he believed,
and died believing he looked through a window
into another world, dust storming the surface
making for a rosy sky.
Amaranthine
Of the colors in the world,
only Tyrian purple grows brighter
when exposed to wind and sunlight.
Produced for royalty by the Phoenicians—
whose name means purple—
recipe lost with the fall of the Roman empire,
more expensive than gold.
Recently, the only known pot of pigment
was discovered in the ruins
of a bath house, undimmed.
In ancient myth, the amaranth
is a violaceous flower whose beauty never fades.
How did they know?
