Feather

"And he loved feathers with a passion."
From Alain de Botton, The Philosopher's Mail,
"The Great Philosophers 13: John Ruskin"

By the time I noticed, it was already floating
up above my head, turning gently, impossibly.
Had a spider’s bridge thread caught it? No—
no glimmer of light on a line, nothing to hold
it there, spinning lento…adagio…except a small
whirlwind just big enough to carry one feather
aloft, riding some other miracle—a temperature
differential, the dance of heat rising off asphalt
kissing the air sinking cool within deep shade
cast by a bank building. Of such ordinary things—
physics, weather, the shifting seasons, a dove’s
disjecta membra—is such unlikely beauty made.
If I'm lucky, my gaze will always lift and follow.