Oiseaux Tristes
When I found the Selby, the folio-sized
“Golden Eagle, Young,” I thought,
This is the serendipity
that makes for a home—this engraved
Aquila, almost heraldic, double-matted,
an eggshell blue band on the inside
edge of the inner mat, calling
to the raptor’s eye feathers, tail feathers, beak,
as it rests on the mere suggestion of a branch.
But now, how sad I see you are,
not just as you are, stilled,
each preened slice settled into its space,
but also, as you were, not long ago—
like Ravel’s small notes, as they rise and fall,
rise and fall in the torpid air,
merely suggestions—before you
were captured on thick wove paper,
pressed like a thug in Plato’s
gallery, some wilder, less deliberate,
more particular self, gone
now into the eggshell blue
ether
of a vacant, unknowable sky.