Jonathan Revere, "Gull Skeleton" (1971): In the first verse I find his skeleton nested in shore grass, late one autumn day. The loss of life and the life which is decay have been so gentle, so clasped one-to-one that what they left is perfect; and here in the second verse I kneel to pick it up: bones like the fine white china of a cup, chambered for lightness, dangerously thin, their one clear purpose forcing them toward flight even now, from the warm solace of my hand. In the third verse I bend to that demand and quickly, against the deepening of the night, because I can in poems remake his wild eye, his claws, and the tense heat his muscles keep, his wings’ knit feathers, then free him to his steep climb, in the last verse, up the streaming sky. (Just astonishing.)
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