The Bird Cards

A vesper sparrow sings

against a melon and lavender striped

sky, on another card,

the red-eyed vireo reaches up

to catch an insect.

I carry them slipped in an old envelope

with its curled window, address worn brown.

                                   What turned up

on the desk: trading cards, a dead fly,

copy of Da Vinci's notebooks that fell open

at the book sale on the words: Define to me why

one who slides on the ice does not fall.

~

and, how many are the ways

in which a bird turns its straight movement

into a curving one?

                              Snow and more snow

blowing into the river.

Card with the corner folded down.

A merganser dives into open

water beneath the bridge, ice shifts

around her. Down, down again, shake of

salty drops

off the red serrated bill.

In the big family, the mother drops

the baby into the sister's bed, warm bottle

sweetened with baking soda, quick off

in her robe to fix breakfast.

                                        Snow falling

erased against the white ice, white again

as it drops into ash-colored water

where the merganser dives.

~

Card three, the two white eggs no larger

than peas, scallop of ruby feathers under the chin,

from the white peas, impossible bird.

An uncle gave me the trading cards

~

Card with the vivid yellows and greens,

"whitchity, whitchity" the masked bird hops

from wild rose to poison ivy,

accosts you from a thicket behind windy dunes.

                       Outside Ithaca, 1927, Fuertes

who painted the birds, struck by a train and killed,

his car crossing railroad tracks.

                                                    That year

the boy who did not dive

into the frothing gorge of the river,

who hesitated while the bright bold ones

dove for their friend, lived.

He who people said was too slow,

thought too much at camp

                      became paler, read Thoreau,

pondered accident, circumstance,

drew the intricacies of flower parts

in his Aunt's garden.

~

Blunt edge of the bird's leading wing,

storm birds,

tiny alula, gray feather sticking out from the wing's bend,

2000 miles, blown sideways, foghorn

in sun, in snow.

            Morning: yellow and green beaten leaves of the apple,

we peel off sweaters and slickers.

Flies stir on the washed-up kelp,

birds shriek from sun-warmed rocks.

~

Cave of snow under the snow-covered

skylight,

cars slow over the bridge,

Eight years I've tried to write a poem.

Eight years, eight years—what is that to the locust,

the Rosa rugosa?

Paper flutters down to the floor by

the wastepaper basket,

layers the ground.

~