Finding the Phoebe by the Bay

Black-mantled shadow, branch-bound possibility
with eyes of certainty you sit no longer than the moment
we take to take you in, to name, cross-reference, predict
the pattern of the flight you will most likely take for food.
Always by water's edge, always by day, collecting
smallest packages the world has for you, adding, adding
in your parabola interrupted mid-rise no forced geometry there.
Sum and fulfillment, stitchery and bindery of the whole,
out, and out, in a dart-return response to the way it is
within the eye. You form within your style, venture and pluck,
what you might call yourself, your name which we
might never know but see as what you do.
For every one by one discovery, seconds, years between,
of you, like you, we dance lightly, lucky, incredulous, believing
home, home being once again our own next leap.

 
by Greg Darms

Greg Darms is the editor of the literary quarterly convolvulus, and a co- founder of the North Bay Area monthly poetry calendar and newsletter Fish Dance. He teaches middle school in Larkspur, California, and also leads workshops in poetry writing for adults. His poems and essays have been published recently in Barnabe Mountain Review, Bellowing Ark, Estero, Limestone, Pacific Sun, and Artists Dialogue. Darms also plays the pennywhistle. © 1998 Greg Darms