Song of a Changeling

Against the pale blue-gray and sunless sky,
The whispering leaves look black in contrast; pines
Bow in submission to the tearing wind.
I try to sing the song of wind and leaves,
But fail, for I've forgot the words; they speak
In a wild code that I once knew, but lost--
A sacrifice for structured human speech.

A gull with gray and black-tipped wings glides by,
Solitary in that arc of sky,
Fighting the buffets like relentless waves,
Struggling till she passes from my sight.
I drink the scene in desperately and try
To grasp some truth.  Unchanging nature wears
A subtly different shape at every blink,
And we're the garb that Nature flings aside,
Regardless of the form we wear outside.
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"Song of a Changeling" first appeared in Balticon 51: The BSFAN, May 2017, Winner: 3rd Place, Balticon Poetry Contest, Baltimore Science Fiction Society, 2017.