Unfixable by David Sloan
It happened again last week standing on Monhegan's headlands,
alongside other sweat-soaked first-timers with trail-maps,
cameras, sloshing water bottles. They shushed their children
and we all looked down on wheeling gulls, slope-browed
eiders, gannets gliding inches above the rumpled-shirt
surface of the waves. A little girl in red shorts
clambered up a boulder, flapped her arms, cried
out, I'm flying! and had to be gathered in mid-
leap by her father. On those cliffs, sky-spill
and sea-tilt blending blues, wings everywhere,
even the yellow fans of clicking grasshoppers,
I felt this familiar, spreading sense of seepage,
as if I were bleeding but unable to locate
the source, the day all leaking away
before filling up; no way to fix it,
to yoke me to the moment, no container
sound enough to prevent sky
from sliding down lopsided
like broken blinds, waves
from scattering into feathers,
or birds from whirling
into children who slip
over an edge,
unnoticed and
uncatch-
able.
It happened again last week standing on Monhegan's headlands,
alongside other sweat-soaked first-timers with trail-maps,
cameras, sloshing water bottles. They shushed their children
and we all looked down on wheeling gulls, slope-browed
eiders, gannets gliding inches above the rumpled-shirt
surface of the waves. A little girl in red shorts
clambered up a boulder, flapped her arms, cried
out, I'm flying! and had to be gathered in mid-
leap by her father. On those cliffs, sky-spill
and sea-tilt blending blues, wings everywhere,
even the yellow fans of clicking grasshoppers,
I felt this familiar, spreading sense of seepage,
as if I were bleeding but unable to locate
the source, the day all leaking away
before filling up; no way to fix it,
to yoke me to the moment, no container
sound enough to prevent sky
from sliding down lopsided
like broken blinds, waves
from scattering into feathers,
or birds from whirling
into children who slip
over an edge,
unnoticed and
uncatch-
able.
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