A seagull jumps off into a wind that cracks it open over the nestled knot
of some inner-bird hinge that moves like the ugly joisting of a jaw,
and the wind cradles it, portside to your cheek, carving out the pendulum
of a weight even-keeling from a mobile short on slack.
If this day’s hours are a page, then minutes find their folded end in origami birds,
and your relationship to passing time is best described as vigilant: you’re careful
with wings, the sharp-cornered pleats that make a beak, aware that in your hands
you’re holding paper’s best impression of a weapon.
The bridge is very long.
The wind pushes you in some direction.
And that damn seagull hangs in the new plane of gravity it’s been gifted,
waiting for nothing, comforted in its new and perfect way of being alone.
