Unfound in nature, and thus with no
ontogenic script, this truest
of rarae aves still has, at least in game
theory, the potential for existence
as a wild card, of total, if not catastrophic,
unpredictability. Hence no sky
watch can ever safely yield its configuration,
nor body of thought devise stratagems
to protect us from its flightpath, and there will
always be some debate as to what
underpins its plummage (I care little
whether angel's blood or antimatter
is involved, jet fuel or phlogiston). All
I know is that if ever the numinous
bird's vague head is glimpsed, flying out of
whatever torn cloudlet
of theory or mundaneness it has likely breached,
there will be such a paradigmatic
shifting of the rules that no one again will
be able to look up into the riven sky
without a keen yearning for the placid horizon
that only yesterday safekept the norm.
Student of disaster that I am, so too do
I prepare myself each time
I sense the ornithological shadow
of another dark thing
winging toward my heart—even as I harken
to the forlornness of its cries.