Chapter 8: Grace & Tracery

Ali Scattergood, Grace, 2012

Tracery

Pluck the feathers down to the bone

and you’ll find that wings are not such

fragile things, beneath their gowns

of softness.  Unlike antlers, which

yearly shed their velvet to reveal

new points and branchings, these must

retain their froth or else they’re nothing

but maps of old trajectories, like veins.

There is a price to pay for flight—

call it upkeep, call it frippery—

this lacy masking of the framework

that, despite all its spiky strength,

could not otherwise begin to navigate

the soaring architecture of the skies.