Epiphany

A turkey vulture carves a holding pattern overhead,

is called to land by a sweet-smelling carcass

surrendered on the bank.

The children point to it with sprig-like fingers,

smudging the glass. The dread in their eyes

falls not on the small, balled up

body of the dead, but on the bird

that has come to feed: a man

in a black feathered coat, slipping

through the seamless sky—

pale colour of skin, diaphanous

at the inner wrist.

I tug on the threadbare fabric of their shirts

to pull them away, but some strange mother

quick and prophetic, is there before me.

They turn away from the window, from her voice,

to tell me once more of their father last winter,

when he leapt from the dock onto a sheet of passing floe.

Terror and Delight: twin sisters swapping clothes.

That day their father disrobed into epiphany,

and they waved as he sailed downstream

coat held high above his head.