Leaving

70 the minnesota review Lynne H. deCourcy Leaving When Ungerie lay like white molted feathers on the floor I knew you thought I was a bird in your hand. I knew my bones felt crushable, my ribs defined and fragile as the network under the down that hides the mystery of flight in folded wings, fooUng you with its impossibility. You never knew how the secret of the land and her creatures coiled sleeping in my brain, was hidden Uke folded wings in my heart; how at the breast of the New England hiUs I had watched the snakes slow their heartbeats and wait beneath the worn stones by a silent frozen stream, wait until they were ready to slip out of old skin and bare new-gleaming black backs in the pale coming sun; how I had learned to let my old leaves go, a silver maple in November hiding my fat ripe buds; you never knew I had become light and bone and sinew that unfolds into wings strong enough to fly, to leave when the time came, to shed even you, you Uke my own body. ...