Birding

Vijay Seshadri | 15 A gray bird with a crest and a black mask. Gilt edges the slim tail feathers. An eye drop of arterial blood in a flask of gray water is the flashing red under the wing. A large wader, gimlet-­ eyed, under the sun’s gimlet eye, spearing frogs in the cattail marsh. The sun itself a larger bird, its wings manufacturing the solar wind that devours, that is what can devour a person— floating in the vacuum of perpetual space, which is what there is and also is itself a bird, a blackbird, its black eye, black in black, its sidewise look that makes you look back. poetry Birding Vijay Seshadri ...