Some deeper matter

Before Settling

Their wings interlock, the birds, as they do,
against the dimming sky, making for a place
known not to me or them, just making for it,
trusting it will reveal itself in a secret glade,
a small rilled valley below an outcropping,
or a copse no one has ever walked beneath.

The small town is night silent and my illusions
hold for now. It is later than I dare think and thick
mist in the channel mutes every sound save an
owl asking what she well knows the answer to.
Sleep is not far off and the body knows what the owl
knows never to ask. Such answers serve no purpose.

The birds have gone now, their interlocking wings
a mail of memory in my mind beating furiously for
somewhere in the faint stab of stars, somewhere they
might cease and be still, regroom and oil the linkages
that make their machine work such marvel, press out
beyond a poet’s eye to arrive at some deeper matter.

Joseph Gallo
June 10, 2014