Dark Birds

DARK BIRDS / Mari Reitsma Chevako Sometimes my mind moves easily, as I would want it to move. But now, as I begin to find pleasure scattering bread to the birds over a thin crust of ice, I think of the clouds as great bruised wings that have stalled, mending themselves over the lake. And then I think of a child I once watched feeding seagulls off the end of a pier. Three or four years old, he jumped each time he tossed a patch of bread near a circling beak. When he hit a white underbelly he laughed and tried it again, clapping and stomping as the bread was snatched in mid-air. But then his father, standing apart the whole time, suddenly swept the boy up, thrusting him over his head into the tangle of claws and hard flapping wings that beat at the face of the boy who beat back screaming as if he were lost in a dark thicket of trees. I wonder now about that instant— meeting the seagulls more nearly than he'd hoped, the tough bodies and accurate turnings suddenly frightening and beyond his control. It's the way, in my mind, a dark image threatens. The clouds suddenly ache and the small cluster of ducks swarm under my feet like fast waves breaking, pulling me down. The Missouri Review · 205 ...