4.

The young man and his friends float the river
the Fourth of July
		                 Downstream are parade
sounds    neighing of horses     marching bands 
salvos of gunfire
		         
Here, there is only the river	soft lap of water
against the inner tube

			            The peace only occasionally
interrupted by an Oh shit! when a raft scuffs a rock
gets hung up on a branch

	     Miraculously, the pelicans sit still on the rocks
inspecting from ice blue eyes on either side of long beaks

		        Their heads tilt this way and that
but otherwise they are unmoved by these creatures

the only ones larger than they who float downstream
	    The young man has the odd feeling he has never
been so close to another breathing thing

He looks into the ice blue of the pelican’s eye as he floats
	    by     thinks of the day his eye drew this much
		        attention	      Hiding under the bill of his cap

eye surrounded by magenta bruise, fidgeting to the rhythm
of fluorescent light flicker 	the professor asking

	   My God, what happened?

He recalls the feel of the lie slipping out of his mouth

	    A baseball I didn’t catch

5.

We come home with the groceries, and I see
the slow V of pelicans floating over the neighborhood
try to tell if they are tracing the river.

I’ve heard they are one of the few bird species
that fly “for fun.” I wonder what that means,
try to imagine what it must feel like

to soar on thermals for up to fifteen miles
without flapping a wing, to climb the pillows
of hot air, drop down into coolness

to gain speed. This is called dynamic soaring.
I didn’t used to be so fascinated by anything
but now, I pull out my phone, try to record them.

They are immortalized as radar blips over
my neighbors’ chimney; in the background
my dog barks, my son is excited to be allowed

to run to the porch by himself. How could anything
be so effortless? I wonder what I might miss
if I were afforded their abilities, their innate sense

of measuring air temperature through their nostrils,
of spotting a single fish from sixty feet above water—
All I can imagine missing is the grey house

with its hot pink door which I drive by every day.

1.

The lone pelican in the reeds
of river’s edge seemed odd.
I stopped—watched—
did nothing.

Later in the paper the story
of its broken wing,
likely caused
by flying into a wire.

That it would probably be
euthanized. When you see
a pelican alone, it usually
means something is wrong,
said the wildlife expert.

My self-doubt that kept me
from calling. Did I cause that pelican
more hours of suffering
or gift it a few more hours
of floating in the reeds,
a little while longer to bob
in the gentle current,
the coolness of water over webbed feet?

Forgive me, pelican. I also, am always alone,
also fly too recklessly for my own good.
 

2.

When I told you about the pelican—
that I thought I should have called someone.

You said, That’s your problem. You always
doubt your instincts.

As a woman, I’ve been taught to ignore
connections. The ones between myself

and the moon, the tides
internal and external.

The way the pelican and I
for an instant

were one.
 

3.

The pelicans sit on the rocks preening,
a section of concert violinists bowing

apricot bills against snow velvet down
of breast. I wonder if they can hear

the friction of their surfaces one against
the other. If there is a making of music

out of their bodies. I remember them
later when the photographer says,

When you touch yourself,
when your fingers skim

the hollow between throat and clavicle
you are telling the viewer, Oh, my skin

is so soft, don’t you wish you could
touch it?