Here and there
in the trees’ understories,
that momentary thumbling’s piping out
a helix of song
palpable as zebraic
black-and-white warblers
who tailgate each other,
running the bugs down, though
it’s not one of them
or even a redstart
or parula that’s
picked its way here
across consecutive dusks,
barely ahead of the air’s
polar bulge. My eyes
dive through binoculars
till dimensions queue up,
then back off to focus
in time for a branch’s
empty trembling. There
it is again. Be quick,
be quick, quicker than
the way one chickadee
appears to become two
who dive to admit
a third and suddenly
all change to a treeful of
olive-feathered fingerlings,
air-fish off in a single
upswing so I turn in a vortex
of my own, grabbing the rail
just before the misstep.
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