On My Walk Home, I Compare Myself to a Stellar's Jay

photo: Alan D. Wilson, natures pics_wikipedia

There is a place where the blackberry bushes (in summer flush with fruit)
flatten into dense bramble.  Here the birds live, robins, finches, sparrows,
chickadees.  Their songs, rapid and varied, fill the thicket.  They make sense
of the tangled, thorny mess, flattened by too much winter rain;
ducking in and out, they chase one another, feathers lush with spring.

Just last week as the first primroses bloomed,
these birds left behind their silent winter huddling,
threaded through the still-bare branches of the apple tree,
called to each another, or to the earth, or sky, or to whatever birds sing.
Then they dove in and out of the blackberry hedges, mad with joy.

The Stellar's Jay perches above in an evergreen, squawks
like a fog horn blowing tuneless during a symphony.
Too big and awkward to join the dance below,
he tosses his head in seeming annoyance.
His feathers gleam blue-black.
Then I watch him spread wings--
his blues are as startling as a cloudless sky.

--klc