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By Sean Serrell

LAKE CAYUGA DIORAMA

I: the pier

is a black icebound barge, its cargo the mottled slush
that gulls leave. Past the pier, the shore’s white cuticle
bears the weight of a pair of greylag geese. A lone gull

eyes them from one of the periodic guide-poles that plunge where
furtive fish ram gently, slick on slick, and drop their curling gifts.

II: the geese

are feral, the precipitate of flock + farm + loose. Beneath
the bleary migrants straining for signposts, they moor
themselves to inside jokes: we don’t need directions,
we are our own egg. They roll through elliptical seasons,
unstirred except by their warm impenetrable trembling.

III: the gull

likes the muted smell of his pier, but misses
the lull, the lap. He dreams of a naked starling
on a summer beach, its rump still round with yolk,
how it drops from his beak to blast open below,
a softshell egg spilled on sand. For a moment,
he wakes to those fat geese.

Now he dreams of chasing fish midair.

IV: the fish

hover in shafts of sylvan cellophane, slide by
ruined and rotten shapes, and sweep their volting nerves
for signals only they can sense: the timbres of turbulence:
propulsion: the cursive kilter, push and thrash