Sometimes the lie is the taxonomy:

finding the spirit through the form

makes for mistaken likeness, loves,

and etymology is rendered prophecy.

Other things have wings, you know.

(after all, there are those named for what was

left, that Summer Azure perched on my toe

in the Appalachian foothills). To define, you kill

the specimen, pin it down beneath glass.

But that’s not what you think it means.

To have, to describe, all you need

is to be there and see. Is the song

its lyrics or melody? What love isn’t

fingers on keys? But what’s no

longer unsaid can change any tune.   

In the best of all possible worlds, which this

is, what we mean is impossibly delicate

wings flitting across these depths.

Or is it the slow shoulders

of the shrugging crane, or its dance?

Or shadow and light playing in the forest?

Kate Polak is an artist, writer, and teacher. Her work has recently appeared in Plainsongs, McSweeney’s, So to Speak,  Barzakh, The Closed Eye Open, Inverted Syntax, and elsewhere. She lives in south Florida and aspires to a swamp hermitage.