little bird waiting for the others ready for a fight against frozen nights the frost-laden dawns heavy mornings where the sun is loathe to rise I’m a little late to replace the feeder you wait on a bare branch still and small as a leaf for the pink glass globe of nectar of life itself snow begins to fall is it right to intervene or like all else is this kindness guilelessly but still something […]
Bird Song #2 Passerine birds have perching feet, all songbirds are passerines– I was unsure at first, feeling more a tinamou, penguin, or skua in worst moods, but having lit upon this branch and begun to sing, I would now need a beak to hide this grin, even in flight I am calling, look, look just what the years have taught me after all, three toes forward one toe back–
Bird song #1 On land I have the upright stance of an Auk, even at a standstill I am charging with abandon– this new happiness is about as blatant as Puffin during breeding season, ornately beaked, comic, bumbling, but hopefully, endearing.
Robber jay soft gray to belie an edge a storm of feathers around a head to take from a hand like that so flagrantly and to plan the thievery in pairs in silent skeletal trees rising below this scraggy summit against a bare sky no view no hint of the drop just mist bright like bleach and to live without fear is to be free yes unless you’re casting it off onto others
Waking in a city of birds a scaffolding of songs scrapings in the gutter guttural divine calls beyond the open window half-closed curtains half -closed eyes the only way to know the ephemeral nothing quite present slow departure slow arrival this one beginning among many others and a motion not a place
Two shadows below: One cast by the bridge the other birds cast as a net and settled or as much as any living thing can be a shadow and a shadow diffusing like ink nothing ever lasting on water or lasting ever it’s just easier to see here a shadow and a shadow ebbing into flight
Everything is more these days thank god the sky is staying blue now perforated by baby jays learning how to jay the world a cacophony of birds a shadow in the underbrush apostrophated bark towhee nuthatch I don’t miss much and there are starlings gone to rob a nest everything is more these days the less is so much less
In the holly, a steller’s jay, angles hiding angles– black-beaked, black -crested, less bird than polygon, the very shape of caution– its sleek blue bravura hidden in the shadows of one hundred glossy leaves, I saw momentarily the bird itself, not the brash emblem it presents and loudly projects from blatant chimney perches– It was unguarded I saw a touch of matte on a bird that is all glint and grit and out and open, […]
This breeze is coming in from somewhere is every bit as intentional as this dappled sun these lean robins the pagan call of the flicker that echoes from the maples shouting what we all already know slowly but surely color is returning to this world
OPTIONAL POETRY 