The Day I Left

A Minute

Hand on Ass

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Birding

Kingbird in a tree
looking at me. The greenheads
are furious, swarming and throwing themselves
against the car windows. They're just insects
but I hope the windows hold anyway:
its my blood they want. I memorize
every part of that bird: black eyes, white throat and belly,
white terminal band across the end of his tail. Black
legs, and wings coming to points before, and not past,
the end of his tail. Hours later, I have a jolt of memory
and pull the Peterson's off the shelf
just as the sky starts to darken, and the thunder rumbles not
too far away. There you are in the flycatchers
in the flat pages of a book
like there were greenheads
trying to eat my blue Subaru
because to them it was vaguely bovine:
quadruped, and dark like an underbelly. Little kingbird,
I memorized you
so I could look you up
and know your name. We made a little eye contact
through my windows. You held still for me
while I looked you up and down. I'm in love with your
black feathers, and your white ones, and your bright black eyes,
and your tiny bones.

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He lays down
in the soft and wet
night grass. A cricket chirps, something else is a low trill.
Internally, he is resigned
from his position
of whether he will do it, or not,
or spontaneously change his mind
about doing it
because of what she said
that was irritating, annoying, and prickly.
He floats
in the soft grass
on his back
like a real swimmer. The
stars hang over him
very far away
and very closely. It could be
as if his shirt fell open, and the whole night paused, the cricket silenced
and the annoyances and irritations
and the things she said
or meant
all simply went away
and the stars increased their susceptibility
to gravity
to his own pull
even though he is lightly floating in the grass. It could be
as if his skin
painlessly dissolved
and his ribs
evaporated away
and his chest
was now an opening, and open and empty cavity
to which the stars responded
by beginning to slide
and then fall
and then rain into his chest
filling him
with light
without weight
without compromising
his position

in the grass and dew
and his ability
to lay down
and be somewhere between
a crust of earth
and a dark, scatter-shot, heavenly
night sky.