feathers

If a lone feather fell from the sky,
like a paper plane wafting down
from a tree house where a quiet boy
has been known to hide,
you might think message or perhaps
mischief, not just some midair
molting of a bird.
But what if many feathers fell
from a place seemingly higher
than any boy could ever climb
beyond the top of Savage Mountain
and obscured by clouds.
What might you think then?
A flock of birds smithereened
by hunters? By a jet?

—Stephen Dunn, “Feathers.”


compliments of The Paris Review