Woke late to frank sun dry hills teeming with passerines and one hoarse quail panting out its love. How foreign, to let it go unspoken, not to sing out from break of dawn as if your very heart were bursting— In the shade a dove’s cool notes, cicadas starting up, even the breeze in the sagebrush discontented until it too is heard
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
OPTIONAL POETRY 