A Limited View
1. Afterthoughts
We are a pair, I think,
although in relation to him
I live inside the shadow house.
I learn like him, by knocking at
invisible barriers. And at night
I keep my back to the light
(as he does by day),
the room so bright
it’s hard to see more than myself
when I look out.
It’s enough, this glimpse
of what the greater dark contains
(praise be containment),
this shallow glimpse
(and relatively easy to forget)
of what we are up against.
2. Birdwatch
A Hooded Oriole, breast and back
bright as egg yolk, black
wings with their white stripes
flapping, black throat stretched then tucked,
pecks what must be his own image
in the tinted bay window.
His mate, or potential mate,
greenish, smaller, alights
above him on a cable dangling from the roof.
He climbs and descends, dodging
and weaving while she
stays near for half an hour, until, like me,
she loses interest in his posturing.
He leaves and returns all morning,
and my focus keeps slipping to him. Finally,
I lift my fingers from the keyboard,
watch him grip the seam between panes,
lose his place and appear for long seconds
to defy the laws of gravity. Or has he
actually found a tiny claw-hold in the glass?
By early afternoon, the gold
above his beak smeared with dust,
he quiets, while I contemplate taping a picture
right there that might scare him off for good:
shadow of a hawk,
owl eyes, or the head of a cat.
Over the weeks, he visits erratically,
seems merely curious,
chirping and tapping, then flying away.
“My bird,” I start to call him.
“You can’t come in,” I say
aware he has no inkling I exist.
– lavina blossom