Ursus Grows Wings

Todd Davis

Ursus’s body commands he eat,

to rake bushels of apples

from orchard trees and gorge

upon the night-dark sweetness

of the last blackberry. He craves

the sharp lemon of sorrel, acorn

meal upon the tongue, breath ripe

with the smashed ferment

of hawthorn.

Ursus climbs an ancient tulip

poplar that rots from the inside out.

Near the peak a hole to crawl through,

to slide down into a pit, a sacristy

where he can sleep and dream

of what he came into this world

knowing. Ursus can’t explain,

but his heart feels like a boat

about to capsize, immigrants

tumbling over the bow, some

drowning in the surf.

In his torpor Ursus struggles

to find the stars he’s been taught

signify him. The animal of his throat

aches for a prayer that might hold

back the seconds, sky collapsing

into darkness.

Where constellations swim

Ursus assumes a dead man’s float,

exhales a final breath, and sinks

beneath the amniotic tide. As he sleeps

he feels a sharp stab at the shoulder,

vision of wings sprouting—axillars,

patagium, coverts of the upper wing

and tail—all springing from air.

And tracked through, struts

and trusses, the scaffolding for flight,

because he may be at sea for years,

like those pelagic birds that glide

over shore, never coming to rest

upon land.

He can’t be sure if the dark

has receded, snail drawing its head

into a spiraled shell. It’s the whine

of a saw that wakes him. Smell

of burning oil like feathers in flame.

Ursus scrambles upward

from a raven’s dream and leaps

from the hole before the poplar

can fall. In his flying he looks down

at a man who cuts a final notch,

steering this tree to earth. He jerks

head up toward branch-crash

and watches Ursus, arms spread,

slide down the trunk

of a neighboring oak.

Claws can write history, but

it’s the black body loping

unsteadily into a grove of beech

that presses the human mind:

those last leaves to go, copper-

gold, like the light that shines

around the heads of saints, vestigial

wings flapping at their backs.

Image © Tina Hartung