Grounded, I watched late-breaking spring take off
without me in the yard. Nightly in March
a cardinal staking out his territory
under my bedroom woke me to the darkness
before dawn with his incessant wolf whistles.
On the eve of Easter a wave of black-masked
cedar waxwings, tail feathers edged the gold
of each incipient Norway-maple leaf,
harrowed the earth, devouring as they went
fallen crab apples shriveled up like cherries.
Then, on May Day, the second oriole
of my life flashed across the lawn & dived
into the nettled, coral-flowering quince.
I took his fence-sitting mate for a vireo,
camouflaged as she was in drab olive.
Somewhere along the line, an orange-breasted
cock-of-the-walk a robin’s size left me
speechless, & I looked him up-a towhee
the way as a boy once in Minnesota
I passed long winters that kept spring on hold
leafing through a field guide. I came to know
birds I couldn’t hope to see but started
repeating the names of- indigo bunting,
scarlet tanager-as a kind of song
I chanted silently, testing my wings.
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