Fog-Lark

As you go back in time, the scientist explains, as you
          become your unself, these leaves flatten themselves
                    as platters to the sun, here, calls travel through the comb
          of light and attention, upward, you return
as sap coursing inside a chosen height. Down the block from my mother
          the museum scientist keeps a drawer of marbled murrelet feathers
                    fanned out by century. 
Each feather holds the math of your meals. You don’t want   
          what you used to want. Your desire has widened
                    to these tiny thoughts scattered across the seabed.
          For two centuries
the logbook by the sea stayed blank,
                    your nest hidden. You were in the water
          and then you weren’t. Another life:
we who lived deep in the woods
          could hear you calling, early, though we never saw you
                    We called you fog-lark, called you
          in vain. Low light,
two lives: you transform from sky and shadow
          to speckled bark, told by what holds you.
                    1974, a maintenance worker limbing redwood
is startled to meet your eye. What webbed feet you have,
          80 miles from the sea. Fifteen stories in the air
                    your one jade egg balances on the highest branch,
          moss-steadied.
Only old growth can bear a sea-bird’s hard landing.