Stepping on the Air.

Torcello, December 2003

When that bird stepped from the ledge
onto the air it stepped off into light
and immeasurable weight of sky and
wind and pulled with it my mind for
I thought of the minds of birds and
how that distance from the bell tower
to the lagoon below was as if that
bird had stepped down as a man would from
a curb to the street, like an arrow
from a bow to the target's dumb eye.
Then came, that morning, seven snow
geese from Asia in their asymmetrical
battalion, honking at the rose lights
of the Dolomites, rising to another
light that vanished them.
The geese and the little heron in the
marsh beside the landing, bent into
its plumage, its legs in the ice water
and the glazed tamarisk tree beyond
in a web of ice. Along the canal from
somewhere beneath the surface bubbles
rose up from a sleeping fish? Dormant
crabs? A shoal of plants? their
minds set upon the air in their animal
fat. Did they dream in that upward
surge of air, that Spring had come and they
could mingle with the distances unending
as the bird knew when it stepped onto air
and took the deft commandment of its wings?