Tract (The Body)

A person can easily forget how big seagulls really are.

–Mary Ruefle

The same is true for all the living. Once, on a jungle hike, a native guide pulled a thin branch down to eyelevel. Wrapped tightly around the bark, a nest as small as an infant’s fist. Inside, like fingernails painted blue, the hummingbird’s miniscule eggs. Then, just yesterday, a migrating eagle landed on the salt flats. Not a tree in sight, just the bowed horizon, shocked white. The rotation of the earth tightened and slowed. The air above me would not hold even a lungful.