A seabird.
Just like the one on the tiny souvenir carving her Mother, the one I never met, sent to me from Gulfport. Swoops down and lands on my back deck in Chicago on a wet hot June summer night.
“I think I’ll try Wisconsin. Or maybe Minnesota. I hear that they have lakes,” the bird says to me. As if it was a matter of fact.
“If only.” I tell the bird.
“We will be back,” says the bird.
“Yeah, that’s what she told me. But I never saw her again.”
“Truer words!” he smiles a pelican grin. “But then I guess you’re not in charge.”
And as the ocean fills with oil, the pelican flies north, and the world poises to rebuild; I remember all those ghosts of summer’s past.
The wisdom in her eyes.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jZ3jysAh0QQ&hl=en_US&fs=1&]