The resplendent female "elegant trogon," her actual name, appeared at my study window the very moment my heroine died (in a novel of course) so that my hair bristled like the time a lion coughed right outside our thin screen-walled shack. What does this mean? Nothing whatsoever, except itself, I am too quick to answer. This bird is so rare she never saw it. I had expected her soul to explode into a billion raindrops, falling on the farm where she was born, or far out in the ocean where she drowned, precisely where I once saw two giant sea turtles making love. Full fathom five thy lovely sister lies, tumbling north in the Gulfstream current, but then the soul rose up as vapor, blown westward to the Sea of Cortez, up a canyon, inhabiting this quetzal bird who chose to appear at my window. This all took three seconds by my geologic watch. | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...DIRGE FOR TWO VETERANS by WALT WHITMAN SPRING IN NEW ENGLAND by THOMAS BAILEY ALDRICH COMPANY COMMANDER by GUILLAUME APOLLINAIRE DON JUAN: CANTO 9 by GEORGE GORDON BYRON THE WHITE NORTH by SAMUEL VALENTINE COLE THE FATAL DREAM; OR, THE UNHAPPY FAVOURITE; AN ELEGY by EMANUEL COLLINS |