Caleb Nichols

MAGIC FEATHER

for Topher

Looking out through tule, mustard,
and wild radish, towards the ocean,

I heard the familiar call
of red-winged blackbirds, remembered

how I used to find their feathers
in the grass behind Grandma’s

house: how I’d stick one up my nose
and flap my arms, thinking if I

found the right feather, I’d fly up
into the grey sky, like Dumbo.

It never worked, though every day
we tried, beneath the trilling wires,

Grandma and me, flapping our wings,
not quite lifting off the ground.

...

My car flew into this small bird
as I sped down the road towards her

house a year after she died, to clip
lilies before escrow closed.

I forgot about that bird until
later, when, perched on the hood of

the car, meditating on bird-
song, I looked down and saw its wing. 

I found a plastic bag in the
trunk, used it as a mitt, pulled it

methodically, like removing
a tick from a dog, ripped its wings

off and nearly its head, shuddered,
and just left it there— wingless, dead.

...

The scent of eucalyptus leaves,
of salt and sometimes sulfur—

bay mud. Eel Grass underfoot
on the path to where her ashes are

buried, a place she once stood
in June gloom, (remember?) we ran,

swung from ropes tied to the branches
of a Monterey Cypress,

foghorn sounding off aways,
the summer I learned to swim,

the summer I found a deer skull
in the woods above the house

that have since become more houses
(Hundred-Acre Wood, we called it).

...

What’s inheritance? A place
I’ve accepted as home because

she called it hers. What’s resurrection?
Elegy, memory (sorry to bug you).

She had a way of raising the dead,
a knack for litigating

the past, for turning over stones
in her solitude and this she passed on, too,

(thank you) and now I conjure
her any old time, like it or not,

now that she’s lifted off the ground,
she’s lighter than a feather,

something I can pick up
and dream into a wing.