Black-Capped Chickadee

How many dees does a chickadee dee
when a chickadee dee dee dees?

He sings at the feeder
in the neighbor’s yard,
sings Mother home
wherever I happen to be.

And I remember how she
listened and whistled
as she hung our clothes
out to dry on a line
stretched from the kitchen
window to the American elm
where he hung upside down
watching her.

Hey, sweetie, she whistled.
Feee-bee-beee, he replied.

And I remember how she
would catch his buzzy dees
and whistling feee-beees
in the palm of her hand
and clothespin them
to the line so our clothes
could sing themselves dry
in a summer breeze.

Chickadee-dee-dee-dee-dee.

He sings at the feeder
in the neighbor’s yard,
sings Mother home
whenever I need her.

Canyon Wren

Chee, chee, chee, chee, chee, chee, cheer, cheer, cheer.

We can’t see the tiny wren
whose full-throated song reverberates
in the steep-walled canyon. In the heat
of a desolate afternoon, his whistling trill
is a waterfall, a refreshing draught
in the dry desert of Chaco.

Chee, chee, chee, chee, chee, chee, cheer, cheer, cheer.

We can’t see the tiny wren,
creeping about his rocky outcrops,
poking his slender bill inside crevices
to gather insects and spiders
until he stops to sing again.
Descending and decelerating,
his melodious song from high above
our campsite is a welcome gift
in the last harsh hours of daylight.

Chee, chee, chee, chee, chee, chee, cheer, cheer, cheer.

We can’t see the tiny wren,
but his song inspires us to consider
cooking up our own dinner,
a somewhat different bill of fare
that will, without a doubt, attract
the attention of coyotes lurking
in the rabbit brush behind us.
We can see them.

Chee, chee, chee, chee, chee, chee, cheer, cheer, cheer.

Mourning Dove

Coah, cooo, cooo, coo.

The insistent cooing of doves
perched inside our chimney cap
penetrates the not-to-be-disturbed,
can’t-you-tell-I’m-working attitude
I’ve been trying so hard to nurture.

The coos tumble down
through blackened brick and mortar,
all the while overlapping, multiplying,
gaining resonance until they echo
boldly in our hearth and undulate
across the living room carpet.

I lift my bare feet, but not soon enough.
Already I can see the male puffing out
his throat, bobbing his long pointed tail
as he woos his chosen female
with quiet, mournful intimacies.

Coah, cooo, cooo, coo.

Can he be describing the sunrise?
How he evaded hunters on the ridge?
Where lie the tastiest water, seeds, and grain?
Or is he just some four-ounce, sweet-cooing male
overcome with her buff-colored belly,
her iridescent beauty mark?
Does she hear the boasting of a master
twig collector? A faithful partner willing
to help incubate and preen their squabs?
Or is she simply smitten with the bluish ring
of bare skin around his eyes, blinded
by the rose wash on his chest?

The hearth whistles with a burst of flight.
Perhaps the shadow of a red-tailed hawk
interrupted their courtship and now my doves
are sweeping the sky, gliding to safety.
Perhaps now I can get back to work.

Coah, cooo, cooo, coo.

Sestina for a Hawk

A hawk silhouettes on a barren limb,
his eyes keen into the glum sullen sky.
Common, Cooper, Ferruginous, or Gray
I can't say--my eyes not so keen as his--
but I do know the cottontail below
on the lawn might want to forgo clover

and, leaping side to side past the clover,
race to safer places under scrubby limb
or even to his warren warmth below.
Death before breakfast, a dive from the sky,
a mortal struggle appeals not to his
hare taste or mine on this April day gray.

But what of the hawk? He studies in gray.
His rapt appetite includes no clover
green or tulips red and pink beneath his
lookout perch on a crow's nest oaken limb.
He hungers for songbirds sweet in a sky
slow lowering down to the ground below.

At least that's how it feels, standing below
Common, Cooper, Ferruginous, or Gray
this heavy-pressed morning of somber sky.
Why can't I consider fresh spring clover
instead of being drawn out on a limb
by this bold hawkish intention of his?

All around me grows silent still as his
clever sharp burnished eyes--if from below
I could see them--calculate lift from limb,
arc, acceleration, pursuit on gray
streaks of decision. With reckless clover
luck, he will seize and surprise from the sky

songs to feed the gnawing glum-hungry sky
that seeps onto his shoulders, drips off his
tail, nourishes white-flowered clover
where cottontails in season mate below.
I blink, recoil from stiff wings of blue-gray
beating within feet of my head and limb.

The hawk hunts the raw sky for prey below.
I'm not his songstress, just poetess gray.
That hare in clover keeps his lucky limb.