Rail

The Inaccessible Island Rail lives in Atlantis,

with two black feet on the black plateau.

It might be slight, it might be shabby,

but it knows what it knows.

Rain falls from the sky.

The sun shines, within limits.

Wind blows in from the furthest west.

There is nothing beyond the cliffs.

Island Cape Myrtle is not true myrtle.

It is not the one in the myths.

Wind-stunted trees fill the fern-bush heath.

Sweet Roman Myrtle, True Roman Myrtle. Lies beyond the cliffs.

What there is is sparse.

It is made of grass and ferns.

The birds fill what they can with themselves and fledglings

in boulders that lightning burned.

They eat beetles, flies, moths.

They become what comes of trying.

The downy undersides of the leaves, they take it.

Until they can’t. They take to flying.

Trying, the wind does what it can.

In time the strangest things occur.

The tunnel finds itself inside the grass, and eggs

of milk, of lavender.