    Each morning, before the sun rises over the bay of Villefranche-sur-Mer     on the Côte d’Azur, cruise ships drop anchor so that motor launches from shore      can nurse alongside. All afternoon we studied les structures où nous sommes l’objet, structures      in which we are the object—le soleil me dérange, le Côte d’Azur nous manque—      while the pompiers angled their Bombardiers down to the sea, skimming its surface       like pelicans and rising, filled with water to drop on inland, inaccessible      wildfires. Once, a swimmer was found face down in a tree like the unfledged robin I saw      flung to the ground, rowing its pink shoulders as if in the middle      of the butterfly stroke, rising a moment above water. Oiseau is the shortest word      in French to use all five vowels: the soul and tie of every word, which Dante named      auieo. All through December, a ladybug circles high around the kitchen walls looking for      spring, the way we search for a word that will hold all vows and avowals: eunoia, Greek      for beautiful thinking, because the world’s a magic slate, sleight of hand—now      you see it, now you don’t—not exactly a slight, although in Elizabethan English, nothing      was pronounced noting. In the Bodleian Library at Oxford, letters of the alphabet hang      from the ceiling like the teats of the wolf that suckled Romulus      and Remus, but their alibi keeps changing, slate gray like the sea’s      massage: You were more in me than I was in me. . . You remained within while I      went outside. Hard to say whether it was Augustine      speaking to God or my mother talking to me. Gulls ink the sky     with view, while waves throw themselves on the mercy of the shore.
Angie Estes, Beautiful thinking
from here
