da boids
the bird feeder i hung on my fire escape over two months ago is finally being visited.
by one cute motherfucking songbird. trying to google what he is...
today i stood there for 20 minutes without moving, just to watch him pick at the bird seed mixture and throw down all the shit he didn't want.
when i got too close he started singing to me angrily.
i had written this poem a few weeks ago when working at my windowsill watching the sexin' ways of city birds:
One Flew
A triangle of birds are chasing each other,
three of them diving synchronized
from my fire escape
down six floors to swoop against the skin
of yarmulkes, fluttering a wind
to send the tops spinning.
Advancing on aerial, acrobatic sex,
sex made possible
by the perhaps hand,
that hand devoted
to skewing the straightened line
and crooking all our caps.
Two sparrows chase for the love
of a fat little bird, her knees
poking out from under
a feathered gut, her tiny beak
panting, her wings stilled as she rests,
briefly unnoticed, on my window sill.
Her black eyes flare with annoyance
as I whistle to her from inside,
now terrified, flapping fast as the cat slams
against the screen, chirping in his cat craw,
joining in the singing of an unrequited song
simply for the love of the chase.