You don’t create the whim, but, owning it,
your fingers shape a seeming from its shade.
It being nothing, after all, you’ve carved
a form enough to make else silhouette:
What should have been? The smoothing of the brow,
a glance, confusion of embrace. You still locate new:
the blue jay in the crow. But no: hint it’s too late
to draw blue from black, to make beginning known.
And what will be? Who says? Which swoop implies
an end, reunion, or a pause—which feather drops
to waiting hands, writes meaning into creases
on the palms: swallow down, pinion of a jay,
embrace the plumes as if they’re hands to hold,
they divine what’s next in what we know they’re not.