by JS Gilbert
‘One day you’ll notice
birds,’ I plan to tell
my son, long before he
notices birds but long
after I notice them
myself. I won’t be able
to tell him why, just then
— sentimentalacian tripe
about flitting spirits on
swift wings of time — but,
really, I just want him
to remember that, once,
his father told him that
one day he’d notice birds.
This flamboyantly unflightless bird—
pinions listless, wings aflutter, feathers
hanging limp like a mink stole, sneering
in the faces of penguins, turkeys, and a
bewingéd God—stands indolent in its perambulance,
upright as you please and bounding
through the grass like the famously grounded
gazelle, just hops atop this fallen branch
as if it weren’t a joyful sin, as if
his wife weren’t soaring to the nest, as if
the rest of us hadn’t forgotten how to fly.
The footsteps behind
me weren’t, but were
a leaf skritching in my
wake. Crunchy and curious,
seeking distant piles
to explore, rakes to elude,
summers to mourn,
assuming I was more
adventurous than I am.
Why must everything
be a thing? Why
does every leaf-fall end
in catastrophe, every
botherant molehill rise
to become a Homeric
mountain we scale again
and again and again when
the wind is so welcoming,
the sun so undemanding, the
clouds so driftingly unconcerned
by our dwindling peaks while we
ignore the view?
sunrise is my favorite when
Creation stir-steps
atop wavetips to sink
its toes in sand before we
bound from slumber
take eagerful brokeful leaps
into the world
we cannot know
‘I don’t know,’ I say to those who ask.
And I don’t. Know.
Why the spires, rifts, domes.
Why the channels, depressions, slopes.
Why spheres.
‘Maybe you should’, says my son, ‘build an actual…castle?’
But I know
what those are, and what they’re for.
So they stop to explore these abstralien sandscapes,
wondering
at the meaning of my creation, and my purpose.
No plan guides my tremorous fingers that
mold and shape and smooth the forms
that form without me.
Arches fall and towers crumble, collapse under
misplaced knees and thoughtless feet.
These places weren’t meant to be, let alone
last even through a day or night or hour.
They are self-serving, imposing haphazard order
on an idle chaos minding its own business.
God took six days, so they say, plus time to rest,
yet I spare only the morning
because I have other plans.
They, too, are as hasty in their admiration which
so fickley turns to mischievous destruction by
toddlered toes, unleashed paws, and cruelty.
Even seagulls are dismissive of my walls, perching with
prejudice until the structures crack to expose
my lack, and my depravity.
Six days seems equally rash, short-sighted and shrifted
given the scope of eternity, of all the hairs on all our heads.
So we blear and smear and have trod among
God’s almighty spires in ignorance and arrogance,
wondering
at His meaning, and His purpose.
Yet He had no other plans and
His fingers do not tremble, and
His walls were built counting on our cruelty to
crack them
and expose yet more layers of perfection.
