Member Poem

When the storm birds cry and rise,
their great wingspans
white against the violet day,
or dark upon the stars,
we know the wind and rain
lie soon behind.

Safe within our metal hulls
for weeks at a time
we can hear their fierce ecstatic
krees! as they ride the gusts,
their song a descant
within the storm’s dense pounding.

Afterward it is silent
but for the drip and pool of water.
The red sun returns to the violet sky,
and here and there across the muddied landscape
we find them: feathers smudged,
huge beaks slack, bones twisted
like the struts of broken gliders.
Their eyes, close on the moment of death,
still shine with a luminous intensity.

Across the valley in the nesting cliffs
fledglings hope awkwardly
up and down the dark escarpments.
They will wait through a year
of slowly changing seasons
for their own moments
of grace and joyous expiration.

Appeared in Aliens and Lovers