The islands off the Aleutian coast are home to
Pegasus.
where baby Aleutians in childhood
range.
Many are sighted at birth before they fly away.
Then you see them. But later their colors reflect the
ice.
Arctic blues, whites,
beige, frost colors make them hard to see
against the clouds, which is why they are myth at first.
Whether such flying horses are real who can doubt?
These are modeled from my years among them.
body submerged in the mother. The baby’s wings are furled
and it looks as though the mother’s head has disappeared.
This confusion of bodies, wings and tails continues to the
legs
which are fragile, spindly like the rockers of a horse.
The front legs are open and the back legs funnel to a v.
The body out of which the baby comes looks rather like
flower by this time,
the head of the young sticking up as though emerging.
Actually it flies out of the mother on its own at this
stage.
Striations of white, pale beige, faded violet, maroon
wash ever pale with a head dress of all white,
useful for reflection when flying near the sun.
The wings of the mother are spread as the baby’s are
not,
so it looks like it is in process of glide,
legs separated as if about to race forward.
They are always born as twins, fraternal we should say,
or maybe the difference is from the birth order born
some days apart.
The Pegasus twin has heavier feet, less mane and its mouth
is open
as in full cry at being second or because it is born in
song,
for the horses sing as they fly.
One’s wings edge ivory though the usual sky,
colors with a sense of paint, subtle pastels.
The second baby is often born less emerged from the
body,
due to different times of its maturity. In addition to the
face plate
it has a body wrap as if coming undone, more spectacular
than its brother. Both are male according to custom,
but parts of the island where females birth are guarded by
the adults.
There’s no point denying that many people think them birds,
they have wings after all, and they fly,
which stems from a lack of imagination among primitives.
On islands where they
live Pegasusians are more like we see spaceships
Who have only assayed the appearance of the babe.
Adults are larger than we would think which adds to the
riddle
of how they can fly like some presidential jet dwarfs
planes.
To compare them to planes it’s a good idea
To imagine the texting produced by seeing one pass
as you recline and look. It leaves open the question
as to where they are going, but they might ask the same of
us.
The answer, to Jakarta,
is as meaningful as if they say Andulusia.
To understand that better, we fly to real places so called,
they fly mythological.
Blame Darwin
for separation of fact from myth,
it has not been so long that myth was fact.
Then people lived on ground in huts, died young, saw stars
and lived in storm.
We posit such life produces more myth than ours.
Living indoors among light produces fact.
Facts however are brutes while myth forgives.
We should send anthropologists back to advise on the merits.
Of course this was done. Many went native and never
returned.
They rode the backs of Pegasus past the astonished airbus.
One thing it shows is how short the age of fact became,
One thing it shows is how short the age of fact became,
since we, having left it, have entered the new age of make
believe.
If it seems three ages appear, perhaps in a fourth age
yet unknown
the ages of the Greeks come full and a lot of foolish things
in poems
bear out in fact and we end up quoting them.
Meanwhile horses
flying past airplanes invisibly because the screens are down
and nobody looking out thinks ufos and contact alien races
but deny the horse.
Does that seem awkward or backward?
who at one time did not believe a bird could fly, despite
reports.
