Regarding Flight

Sometimes two wings, one thrown up awkwardly and rotating free
while the other attempts to work straight, will pretend they are empty
of everything they have ever carried. Sometimes in the quiet passage
of an evening some birds are too close for flight. Across the fields
are swallows that pass like ink under the eye as it scans beautifully
and without reserve what is beneath it and then Plato rises with his speech
about how the eye casts out a force that captures whatever it looks at,
and the force apprehends the thing and brings it in. Today I think
the mind’s eye works the same, casting about like the time my brother
caught an owl in his shirt and walked it back and held it
between his knees on the floor of the car. The shirt landed perfectly
over it and without a thought he pinned both ends
and drew the owl up as though in a bag. And so I read
a letter from him today, pinning both ends of solitude. We are older.
His chimney needed cleaning. Barefoot on a tin roof. Balanced
at the apex as if ready, one arm thrown up awkwardly.
The brush clattering down. The thought he’d die alone
sprawling up. This is what he writes me for, when his arms
are empty of everything they have ever carried. To say he missed
me today. And what I am for: a mind’s eye to go out and bring him in.