Life Cycles

In the matter of wintering birds: consider Barnacle geese, who make their homes and families in cliffside nests. The barnacle gosling is full of tiny organs, like a tiny heart (full), or a tiny stomach (empty). The empty stomach makes it jump from the cliffside to the rocks far below. The full heart helps them believe they will live. The ones who live fall in love, beget cliff-jumpers of their own—the ones who don’t render their new bodies to the earth; their flesh and feathers unfurling like some midnight flower, revealing the pale treasure of hollow bones, tiny.