Transfiguration in North Minneapolis

Blinding white, the sudden wings beat
in front of my windshield, as if
the gull had dropped from a horizon
of sapphire sea and chalk-bright cliff
instead of this dreary March sky
hanging low over a parking lot edged with a Dollar Tree, a Taco Bell,
black-crusted snow.

I watched him ascend, dazzling white,
such as no fuller on earth could bleach. . . .
wings that might have flown straight from the womb
of the first day.