Starling the Trickster

You fooled me, trickster

with your staticky singing

from the pear tree in late morning

a perfect call ringing:

"killdeer, deer, deer,"

from your bill to my ear

made me drop the axe I was about to swing

and run to the open yard

searching skyward for that 

shorebird sign of spring!

You fooled me later, the day far gone,

with a near perfect rendition of tundra swan.

And now I find

as I search my mind

for a reason to dislike you

that disaffection grows

as melting snows recede

and crocuses poke through.

Soon comes the season of your usurping

nest sites not meant for you.

Try as we might, you still alight

and prospect, select, and build

Secretly at first, then in a burst

your song comes in squeaky trills.

We shout and wave

you fly away

and we believe we've won!

Yet deep inside the martin gourd

incubation has begun.

February 20, 2017

Whipple, Ohio, USA

Poem of the Great Blue

Oh my little fish swim near
in the cool shade of the mangrove clump
there's nothing here for you to fear
swim closer, little sugar lump

These long pale legs and plumes you see
are just another mangrove tree

swim through these roots and swish your tail
your slippery form I shall impale

and turn you back from whence you came
thus Nature plays its endless game.

Thinking About Palms

Dusk falling rosy

Bedtime for parrots, monkeys
wind rattles palm fronds.

Dawn, Cerro Azul

From the overlook, dawn breaking like soft rain
the humid, warming earth heaves skyward its misty breath.
Smaller hills like sleeping bodies peek above the blanketing white.
Squeak-buzz of hummingbirds, tinamou whistles, toucan croaks
and this forest of rain—this jewel-filled jungle—launches itself unquietly into another day.

—from the garden at Birder's View, Cerro Azul, Panama

Dreaming of Potholes

Lemon sun kisses pale grassheads
awash in the ever-present wind
and the tinkle-buzz song of the longspur
like a tiny western meadowlark
makes me stop to look.
There he perches, lord of all he surveys
singing not for our ears
but for all his nestlings yet to come.

I am dreaming of potholes,
glacial leavings and tepee circles of stones;
of willets cursing my every step,
of ducks floating and dabbling
on every piece of earth-bound sky.

And I want to hear that longspur,
chestnut-collar compressed by his fervor,
sing that bit of prairie bebop
his head tilted back as if to let the wind
take away these notes he no longer needs.

But I need them.

For a Dancer

Watching you through the heat-steamed glass
snowflakes hissing with the wind
you swooped in close as if by chance
my camera swung to take you in
and clicking it I startled you
Just as you did this little dance.

For the Avocet in Winter

I saw you walking all alone
lost in thought or concentrating
pale shadow of your springtime self
perhaps it's spring you're contemplating

Sunlight makes you paler still
with every step the water deepens
stopping once to wet your bill
concentric ripples outward sweeping.

When your head returns to burnt sienna
the nest you'll tend along the coast
'neath summer sun that leaves me squinting
I'll remember you, my winter ghost

American avocet in winter plumage, Merritt Island NWR, Titusville, Florida.