Bird Watching

It rained all night. Today

I dry-muse, inside, on tall roses

prolifically budded pink, yellow, red,

 

rising behind landscape layers

of glossy green. A blackbird thrashes

to the surface of the window-side shrub.

 

Ungraceful she is, faded black

with an eye duller than poets suspect:

nesting. Good mother, she must not blink,

 

must keep her head eternally cocked,

wary gaze on the shadowy unknown.

I wait, unmoving, not wanting to intrude.

 

(Ear eternally cocked, not even wanting

to listen, I hear the distant metal screech

of the city-bound train. Good-bye

 

for real, she said, stooping to kiss

her faded mother. She’s dressed for a party,

brilliantly plumed.)

 

I think this is an answer, of sorts, to the beautiful Prom night by Jenifer Cartland (Poems from in between).