Jonathan Revere, "Gull Skeleton"

In the first verse I find his skeleton 
nested in shore grass, late one autumn day.
The loss of life and the life which is decay 
have been so gentle, so clasped one-to-one 

that what they left is perfect; and here in 
the second verse I kneel to pick it up:
bones like the fine white china of a cup, 
chambered for lightness, dangerously thin,

their one clear purpose forcing them toward flight
even now, from the warm solace of my hand. 
In the third verse I bend to that demand 
and -- quickly, against the deepening of night, 

because I can in poems -- remake his wild eye, 
his claws, and the tense heat his muscles keep, 
his wings' knit feathers, then free him to his steep 
climb, in the last verse, up the streaming sky. 


Jonathan Revere

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