Garden birds; one is lost in the garden
shack—driving his short dark-gray beak into the window intensely. Twilight is
right around the corner, and the bird senses it. He is striding the windowpane,
behind the curtain in a near frantic walk, with jerking wings—integrates
motions of concentration, fixed on this one escape route: as I hear a yanking of feathers in the shack
I go to investigate, see all this—, he lifts his head, hears me, then drives
his gray to dark bill beak onto the window pecking at it as if this is his only
way out. The whole body shakes; he doesn’t have sense enough to turnabout, and
go back the way he came in—
Calm, alert, keeping watch—my breath pauses as I reach to grab him, his
legs kicking, wings flapping, with a swift motion, perfectly in rhythm I
turnabout to face the ajar door, I let loose of my fingers, he hops out of my
hand, flying out the door, the same way he had come in. I see him perched on
top of the garden wall now, proud and triumphed (as
twilight falls).
#3872 (4-23-2013)
