Steller's Jay at Castle Rock

The animals love me.

This black-crested blue jay just said so.

He flew up to me not eight feet away and told me how important I was to the world. He said I'm in a safe place.

He said I was welcome to stay here as long as I needed.

He said he would be back if I needed him.

He knows I won't need him, but we both know it's important for me to hear.

Now I'm just waiting here for the next miracle to come along.

Miracles don't work that way.

They don't come along.

They crash into you, or you into them, or both together.

They take too much serious energy to manifest into being.

That means you have to give a lot for a miracle to happen.

I can't stay.

I must move on.

To latitude and rotation

or was it platitude and floatation
that pressed you up against the cul-de-sac curb
where all the poplar’s fallen leaves converge?

No, it was latitude and rotation,
a relentless sense of spinning in place until
you can’t see your own orbit

around her. Such minimal oxygen
in atmosphere so thin. A careless kind of latitude
without a proper balance of longitude.

Where 23° 27’
means nothing to you, clockwise, counter-clockwise,
rotating in a tilt always toward her photosynthetic smile and solar flare.

It must have been gratitude and fornication
that settled you into her clogged gutter
until the next gush dragged you down the storm drain.