1. Prolegomena: What the bird says

The bird wishes to say beforehand
(before you are absorbed by the sound
of the rapidly beating lath and strings of its wings),
that what is real is sometimes just supposition
and hearsay:
Flight is a catenoid unloosed, agitating arcs,
parabolas, gauzily pottering
in syncopated taps on tapered toe,
and round the wing—air's push and pull,
a spinning fan set to calibrate
soars and glides, lightness and stiffness.

2. Found

Found the bird knee-deep and exculpatory, embedded
in the man-made island paradise with its hunting grounds
now razed, and the tongueless smallmouth bass and carp
in a warren of lakes and canals taking the bait
as guards fly-fish near the army barracks.
In this summer of fitful waiting, Chinook fly,
black hawks hover high and low over the city's northern edge,
past the humming bees and recreant turret gunners.

3. The invasion of termites

Termites simmer in the trenches
as crows fly over, tracking the path of dogs
let loose in the hills. The king of the mountain forests
has confirmed that he would encourage and expect
the local chieftains to help remove the parasites
which threaten the enduring mountain passes
and the stability of his domain. He has also ordered
troop deployment in armored carts to dig out
the militant termites while people wait
for what they have to say.

4. Last sighting
The hysterical pillage of the impoverished towns
is widely documented. The birds descended in circles
in a mane of brutal darkness, rotor blades ripping
easterly clouds, plundering hills in their relentless pursuit,
the birds of prey probing their theories of extinction,
the taxonomy of wounds and bruises of extirpation.
And soon they would be gone, bacteria and fungi
and megafauna, the bipedal species last sighted
retreating in the battered digestive tracts
of the mountains.

Reprinted with the author's permission from Puti/White, Toronto: Frontenac House, 2005

© Patria Rivera