Excepting the chickadees

I am done with ceremony
with procedure and pomp.
This daily sun-sitting stillness
though, is its own kind of ritual:
filling of the vessel
to watch the birds approach
in ones and twos and threes, cheerful
tumblers through the trees flitting flipping
from branch to branch, then in turns
to prescribed perches on the rim
of the hanging birdbath—sip, glance
sip, glance. My chance to be invisible
an arm’s length away or a just bit more
a little over my head
this leaf-dappled flickered flight
easy as the breeze
and accepting of me