John J. Audubon

Most of us have heard crashing so loud We hear a constant wave that spins between our temples piercing content with its sound We lost the 20,000s several years ago Gradually we feel it washing blank the range in which we hold the things we know Put your ear to a hummingbird's wing Place the hum against the ring Listen to its still and violent motion making Treading water We are dense waves We don't float Our stories all just sink below the mess of wake the millions of paddled palms our cupped hands make Overhead the goose flies low, necks curve darted straight as compass needle, dislocated from his mate He found her body rafting toward the mouth of the river when she disappeared with the current underneath the tree trunk bridge Out toward the mouth Out with the spilling water We saw it coming like a spirit soars directed Gunshot smoke and a sinking thereafter He fell fast to the ocean while the red painted feathers floated down John Audubon thought about the wiring as he swam toward the twisted neck and the broken boat body bobbed Examining the belly for the bullet's tiny piercing, he cried, "Oh!" When a secret fluttered, a migrant hummer detached its grip Overhead his heart sped spooked and we splashed as the gail swung cold and some fish folded in the crest slap It lapped at our heads, but we received it like a reprimand that we were too consumed by motion to perceive or understand John J. Audubon, his gifted replication Painted with precision, perfect vision like the shot stain And the whole world swam in deaf anticipation til the goose fell like a shed shell from which the humming secret sprang