Birds of Slow Motion by Frederick Wilbur

Uncle Morris stowed his wooden canoe
in the rafters of grandmother’s garage,
upside down as if floating on the depth
of apex, a doubt on spiritual mystery.

As a ten-year old, the ribs seemed
a fence against darkness, or a whale’s
cavern: something I’d never seen before.

Of the float, it was stranded.
It was waiting.

My uncle did not want to be a lawyer,
would take cousins and cousins
to the Sound to swim,
to picnic at Fairfield Beach Club.

For me, the canoe remained paddleless
all my years growing up
like memories that wait for their time,
vultures of intention slow to finalize meaning.



Frederick Wilbur’s poetry collections are As Pus Floats the Splinter Out and Conjugation of Perhaps. His work appears in The Comstock Review, Hampden-Sydney Poetry Review, New Verse News, Red Eft Review, and Shenandoah. He is poetry editor for Streetlight Magazine. He was awarded the Stephen Meats Poetry Prize by Midwest Quarterly (2018).