Fifth of Five
Two Page Openings from
The Way We Live
by Burt Kimmelman  

Early April Morning            dazed spring approaches                       — William Carlos Williams A few birds twirling their notes in the new light and my neighbor, hunched over his garden, the hood of his sweatshirt keeping his thoughts to himself, looks past me as I bend to take hold of the newspaper tossed on my walk before dawn when wet, dense darkness was all there was — but then I hear his "good morning," he and I standing upright for a moment before his turn back to work, the bamboo prongs of his rake softly scraping the soil the night's rain has softened, to make ready for planting flowers, the early hour otherwise still.	..	Arctic Terns            White clouds like kerchiefs at parting            Are waved by the wandering wind,            And the heart of the wind            Aches at the silence of love.                   — Pablo Neruda Arctic terns touch down from the sky every few years, leaving their life of flight to raise their young and then, in the waning light, lift off the firm earth of Greenland to make their way south — roving high above the ocean, not too close to land but looping east to trace the coast of Africa or west along the shores of South America, then finally crossing the open sea to the farthest reach of ice — for a second season of days. In large flocks they eye the water for food, and once a male has fed his future mate her fill of fish — in a rite beyond gravity — they join for their entire lives. Yet flying must be an act of solitude, an unfed longing.