That Pale And Distant Season

Today, scientists wonder how migrating birds
remember their way south each fall,

what complex mnemonic plays like a song
in their head, year after year. But for millennia,

we simply asked where they went. A seasonal
disappearing act: winter a wardrobe, suddenly

empty. Aristotle thought swallows would
encase themselves in clay and slink down,

serene, into a swamp or bog. Others thought
they wintered on the moon, and followed.

Cyrano de Bergerac tied himself, at dawn,
to glasses filled with dew, waiting for the water

to evaporate and lift him, like a toast,
into the sky. Domingo Gonsales arranged

twenty-five swans into a sail and turned
that ship of feathers broadside to the wind.

A week later, he claimed, he stepped foot
into the pale dust that covered the moon’s

surface like a fuzzy, peachy mold. There,
he saw nightingales nesting in craters,

their plumage having turned a blueish-white,
as if coated in wax. But in 1822, that balloon

was popped: a German count shot a stork
over his castle and found, growing like a second

spine from its chest, a broken spear.
The arrowhead was of West African origin,

disproving the lunar theory of migration.
Still, today, you can watch flocks

of white storks fly over Lebanon each fall
and cross the face of the moon, and if the few

noctambulant birders squint just so,
they may appear as if they are headed

towards that pale and distant season above.