Dark-eyed Junco – a Homecoming

Seasons turn the birds,
long gaggles in the slipstream,
deny this place and habits,
when Canadian airs
slump down, heavy in the jets.
Pelican pouches gone,
black tipped twirling
thermal swirlings gone.
Stilt legged herons,
still, balanced on a single bone
like prophesy, a blue note
scribbled on the margin of things.
Egrets, orange-beaked
and wading,
slow stepped
and stabbing,
reading slow
the ditch water;
paddling boats
of the many ducks,
wood, ruddy, mallard and wigeon,
gliding bloom algae scratchings
of summer – gone.
All the fattening
cushlings gone.
Even the Kingbird,
stout-shouldered,
Maltese,
relinquishes its kingdom,
surveyed from the fastening post.
The cunning moves Othello,
on these crisping griddled plains.
Dark-eyed Junco,
black over white,
return the wintering hedge,
to the shrivelled berries,
road grit, given seed
and stubbled white pages.
Great grays and redtails
lurk these simpler plumes
in simpler plumes,
and wait their white plungings.

Image: Nikhil Mitra on Unsplash