Guys, this poem is finally published! I've waited over a year to show this, and it's finally time! This poem showed up in Sigma Tau Delta's The Rectangle, and I had the opportunity to read this last week at their international convention. Please, enjoy.Sighting -- February 2005At 7:13 in the morning,
I sit on the Great Salt Lake's shore
With binoculars in my shaky
Hands unused to the early morning's
Chill. I wait, hearing
Seagulls' caws, watching the 'v's arched
Over the horizon -- flapping silhouettes.
He appears, squawking
On the western bank, twisting
His neck to snatch something off
The shore. A Chilean Flamingo
(The great Pink Floyd as they
Call him), escaped from Hogle Zoo.
The keepers forgot to clip his wings.
"Not many pink things live
In Utah,"
I mutter, puffing white
Into the air. "How could this creature,
So accustomed to hot tropics,
Survive in this desolation?"
He lifts off, as if in response, cruising
The sky like
A painted javelin spearing
Lightening-blue sky, or
The feathered arrow I never shot.
Year ago, at scout camp,
Others flocked to the
Archery range while I roosted in
The nature tepee, hearing lectures
About forestry, mammals, wildlife. I
Discovered that the term
"Exotic" extends to more than bright,
Colorful, deadly species, but to the foreign,
To what doesn't belong. In new places,
Some exotic species explode in numbers, others
Survive. But most wither and die.
That solitary avian, strange
Pink intruder, should have starved,
Or fainted from the cold,
Or contracted some disease,
Yet he glides, his bright feathers
Reflecting in the jade lake
That swallows his image, giving birth
To an exact replica, a twin
Flying inverted, parallel.
Floyd might not see it, but the lake
(Saltwater, insect-infested shore and all)
Makes one, two. Two, four. Until
Solitude becomes a type of togetherness,
Comforting itself, giving place
For the lone exotic to spread
His wings and cruise the sky.
