Shapeshifters
by Alice B. Fogel

On the opaque glass of the lake, layered over the clearer lakes
of past and future seasons, a mosaic of seagulls
spelled out the surface from shore to shore.
At first frozen, in one multitude they suddenly rose
like winged smoke, then died down again,
resettled in new formation on the ice.
Once again they erased their array, rising, reconsidering--
then alit, statuesque as if sure now.
Each sketch they made
etched the plain of their page afresh--
as if to say: this; no, this; no, this. In my vision,
words flickered in air without speech,
burning to carve from the obscure a visibility:
grounded, the words took shape, sculpted, all at once
defined as birds. Marvelous landscaped
geometries of sense--one by one everywhere I saw them
leap into wheat stalk, spin into street,
mottle, flex, and flare
into oak bark, ash branch, blackened maple leaf.
Now the quiver of images lifts and falls
like fire in the stove that is the same fire
from fall to spring, even though the only constant is
the feathered glow of heat,
and even though each frozen log
I feed it is unique. Each shivers the flame, holding its own
brief wing against the cold, like a stone
shifting shape against a chisel in flight.