The Phoenix Lab
The tried electrodes, but they were incinerated along with the feathers.
The MRI and x-ray attempts proved useless as well –
if the bird wasn’t moving, it was starting to smoke, and had to be removed.
They swabbed and poked in between combustions – a tricky task,
since there was no rhythm their computers could track or predict –
but the labs were all inconclusive.
Eventually they just put it behind glass in the center of the room and watched
as it swirled, smoldered, twisted through states of birth and decay.
It was the only one in captivity, and like any captured wild thing,
it’s behavior was notably strange and erratic.
Though the mythology books (how they hated to reference the Greek stories!) said
the birds would cycle through every 500-1400 years,
this one had been catching fire a few times a day, as if it were desperately trying
to emerge somewhere else, as something cageless.
Some were so frustrated by the end of each day, they would leave early
or continue to sit in a corner poring heatedly over more tests, more books.
But there were a few who lingered in humble fascination,
their instruments of study left at their desks, and a strange thing happened
where their eyes grew unfocused, seeing in a way that did not try to name
each movement, count behaviors, quantify the life before them.
It was enough, finally, to simply bear witness to a mystery,
look past the unexplainable into the familiar heart of the metaphor.
Scandal erupted one morning when the creature was gone,
a couple of the scientists lost their jobs. The lingering ones. Their faces flashed
through the news stories for about a week, looking calm and with no comment,
and the story passed from public view fairly quickly, what with people’s
capacity for such things.