Works

Were We Shearwaters, a Meridian

So, veer the glide path, sway, and (here
I use the term as navigators might)
fishtail, a proper quality of asymmetric flight,
unless you’re drawn to think we merely fly amok
as Malays say, when I’d rather have it plain enough
the make of a wave, the ebb of a trough
we hunt apart, but with a tidy sense of flock.
North, then, the vapor way, and clear
into the very iris of the sky
where sometimes eagles stall; another mote
among a hundred thousand, full and by, aswarm
where the senses thin, and all we know is warm
in the genes, or what we’ve fledgling learned by rote,
(it’s even in the tricky nature of the light
to chart the doldrum girth as if it were a cold blue)
with nothing small enough to size the world by
here, so only the infinities can possibly hold true.

Preludes Literary Annual
University of Tasmania
1987
John Bryson.