Petrel Chick.
What did I know, lying in the darkness where I had hatched?
At first, I loved the smell of loam, musk,
the dampness of the underneath.
Then came a fishy scent, though what did I know of fish?
Bill to bill, my lunch was served.
I had no control over where I lived, when or what I ate.
But sufficient to my status as a puff of protofeathers,
the meals kept tunneling down from the spot of light
at burrow's end.
I knew to raise my mouth to what arrived.
I had no idea what I was or what I was meant to be.
Ridiculous, I know, that I should have a voice,
sleep, and eat, and roll over in the earth and dark.
That was life.
Until I grew so blubbered, I could barely turn in my sleep.
I squeezed out of that earth hold
when I caught the open ocean scent that told me I had wings.
And I was gone into sea-spangled spume and sky.