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| Shoebill Stork and Snowy Egret Wild Animal Park, San Diego Photo by Neli Moody |
The Shoebill Stork
Totemic and driftwood grey, the weathered feathers,
his face shy and thoughtful, and still, as one might find carved
in native villages of the Northwest Pacific, or far away as Aeoteoroa,
shrouded in a long white cloud.
All about the edges of this sea the people
have coaxed out of the trees and rocks
ancestors, half human, half divine
and the spines of the watchers are sap fed and ringed.
Disinterested in humans, Bec-en-sabot, washed as stones,
devours frogs, lungfish, small crocs, his natural habitat far
on the other continent, the one we used to sleep with.
Papyrus and reeds form his nest, and nearly tall as I am,
I think he must read on hot afternoons in solitude, pince-nez
on his patrician bill, color of our grandfather’s locks,
or pluck from his bed a flute, or write in ancient scripts
Of Ethiopia or Sudan. You see this map I am drawing
from San Diego to the South Pacific to Africa, because
his beauty was unexpected and I was with my daughter.
Together, we seem to summon miracles.
Neli Moody
10/21/2007
11/15/2007r
Totemic and driftwood grey, the weathered feathers,
his face shy and thoughtful, and still, as one might find carved
in native villages of the Northwest Pacific, or far away as Aeoteoroa,
shrouded in a long white cloud.
All about the edges of this sea the people
have coaxed out of the trees and rocks
ancestors, half human, half divine
and the spines of the watchers are sap fed and ringed.
Disinterested in humans, Bec-en-sabot, washed as stones,
devours frogs, lungfish, small crocs, his natural habitat far
on the other continent, the one we used to sleep with.
Papyrus and reeds form his nest, and nearly tall as I am,
I think he must read on hot afternoons in solitude, pince-nez
on his patrician bill, color of our grandfather’s locks,
or pluck from his bed a flute, or write in ancient scripts
Of Ethiopia or Sudan. You see this map I am drawing
from San Diego to the South Pacific to Africa, because
his beauty was unexpected and I was with my daughter.
Together, we seem to summon miracles.
Neli Moody
10/21/2007
11/15/2007r
