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.