Traces

A Modern Instance

Still comforted by down, my neighbors sleep Under the scattered flakes of crystal fractals. A soft snow matrix not a half-inch deep Divulges double tracks: two pairs of dactyls And one left-and-right-shoe set. All six, In parallel, reveal that their imprinters Were two jog-trot runners—not twin sprinters Through late-winter snow that barely sticks. A mistress and her dog (so heel-to-toe Lengths argue) came this way in morning dark, But left no ghostly trace of voice or bark, Only these thin impressions, soon to go The way of many fine things doomed to fade, Like verses the Etruscan poets made.

Until the Cutter Came

—A three-winged goose that was found in Florida recently will have a better life thanks to some human intervention. The domestic Egyptian goose was found on a golf course near Hollywood in June. Its three wings made it impossible for the goose to fly, or even walk. That’s where a local veterinarian stepped in and performed an operation removing the extra appendage.

—NBC News

A bird winged once too often at its birth (Clipped by no hunter—though pinned to earth) Was found incapable of being borne Aloft, but not of being left unshorn In the extreme. Found at an unnamed tee, And overblessed with wings that totaled three, The creature—neither fish nor fowl—stood still For this: the bounty Nature, with a will, Bestowed. Well-grounded but unfit to straggle, It would never go to make a gaggle; Never lived a goose-existence blander; Never take more than a landlocked gander At skeins of grey that vector through the rondure, Dopplering beyond the wild blue yonder.