Now Poems

Roadrunner

He's a strange looking creature as he runs through the yard
at a somewhat remarkable pace.
He looks rather cookoo with his head feathers askew and it appears
like he could run all day long without ever getting any place.
The noise that comes out of him is certainly a “call.”
No one would ever call it a song.
The only time you see one fly up is the female when she perches in a tree
to look for her young; then, you might hear a sort of clucking sound.
Oh, it can fly if it has to...if a car's driving by,
but just far enough to get out of the road, and certainly not very high.
He's an opportunistic eater and will kill smaller birds if he gets the chance.
I saw him murder a finch once, so I chase him from where they feed,
and just when I'm about to turn the hose on him, he runs by
showing off the dead baby snake, his most recent kill,
as if he thinks it'll make me like him,
and it almost will.

Little Acrobatic Bird

Black-headed grosbeaks, spotted Towhees, California Thrashers,
lesser goldfinches and all kinds of hummingbirds
enjoy eating at the feeders near our house and some
like nibbling seeds from the ground.
They were all part of our private bird haven,
and we'd see them every day, all day long, since they felt safe
from the big birds like buzzards, red-tailed hawks and ravens
that fly high. Those birds were too large to fly close by.
Then one day, things changed.
The birds were staring at the feeders from the trees across the drive,
with no one feeding on the ground.
Slowly they came over, seeming wary, constantly looking around.
And then I saw him. They all had known he was there;
he's only about eleven inches long,
but he's an acrobat in the air. He can fly sideways, between the feeder and the tree
and somehow the speed at which he does it, scares the heck out of the birds
and amazes me. I don't like him. He's an arrogant bastard.
I was eating breakfast one day when he got in the birdbath
and looked in the window at me, almost with a sneer,
as if to say, “I'm in control here. If you don't like it, leave town.”
Okay, he didn't say that. It was my interpretation I suppose,
but if I'm sitting outside and I see him fly by,
I try to squirt him with the garden hose.
If I wave my hands and shout, that scares the friendly birds too,
but if they see me fill the feeders then they know I'm okay
and fly in again, while the sharp-shinned hawk
tries to figure out what to do.
Sometimes it's hard to figure out how to deal with Nature
when you think Nature's messing with you.

The California Thrasher

The California Thrasher is a bird with an inverted beak,
or maybe you'd say “upside-down.”
Whenever he wants to eat something, he has to pound it on the ground,
until it breaks in little pieces,
and then he's free to take a taste.
He's a big bird, as birds go,
and he can't afford to waste his time on projects that don't pay,
so the California Thrasher must be eating all the day.
You wonder how his ancestors survived.
Could something be horribly wrong when a species that may have started
as evolution's little joke, is still here, still pounding away?
I don't think that at all. I think something is very, very right
because when we see the thrasher, we smile inside.
It's such a heartwarming sight.