Or what about the feckless magpies framed like long-tailed night on tuckered tufts of grass? The one turned toward the left, the other, blamed perhaps, turned vaguely to the right with sass as if to seek its fortune well apart from the starkness of the crisp dark angles— formality in mimicry of art— that pin the larger bird above the tangles of dry brown blades, its silhouette much like a weathercock or harbinger of rain or, truer to its thieving heart, of pride. One bird a gadabout, the other vain. But then you note the hose that runs its line across the park as lustrous as the eels cavorting in the district’s paddies. A sign of what might quench the one who thirsts for travels. A marvel no less stark or boldly drawn than that which halts the magpie in its place. So like a rooster perched above the lawn it seems to prophesy the wind and weathered grace.
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Amarillo Bay 