By J Kramer Hare
This one’s cooperative, we birders would say,
notes our guide, who lowers the binoculars from his face,
and his eyes from the titmouse
standing on a thin, swaying
branch above, as if they’re doing it for us, he laughs,
but it makes you wonder…
The leaves rustle, shushing us in time to hear
another call: two notes only, like a doorbell.
Ah, red-eyed vireo nearby… love that—
so ethereal….
This one? I try to emulate the noise,
rather poorly, I think, but I must be close enough—
he nods. The call sounds once more.
I wonder: could I whistle like a bird,
chirp like a bird, could I sing
the poetry of birds,
could I speak of birds without resorting
to red-eyed vireo, or titmouse,
and call them instead by songs
they sing only for themselves?
I place binoculars before
my eyes, and point them past
the trees, and past the pond—
out to the horizon, scanning
for a coming day
when all of us
will sing
each other’s names.
___
J Kramer Hare lives in Pittsburgh, PA where he enjoys listening to jazz and rock climbing. 2024 Best of the Net nominee, his work has appeared or is forthcoming in Untenured, Zero Readers, Millennial Pulp, the Oakland Review, Autumn Sky Poetry Daily, Hoot, and elsewhere.