by Al Maginnes
Because they are beautiful
and small, with brassy songs
and feathers that host the entire
range of visible color, I could
listen or watch without any need
to know their names. My wife reads
markings and colors, can tell
one from the other, which is native
and which migrating or lost.
Perhaps I should not be content
with how little of the world
I can name. When my friend’s hands
no longer let him play flute
or sort out chords on the piano,
he read in a chair beside
a floor-to-ceiling window. Soon
he knew the species and song
of each bird crowding the feeders
in his yard. Sometimes he would scat
a few bars of bird song
the way he scatted jazz licks,
music replacing music, his song,
from a body slowly learning
the inhospitalities of gravity,
imitating those smaller bodies
still blessed with music and flight.