My Life & The Study Of Birds

I have devoted my life to the study of birds,
though they study me but little--
they are not sentimental that way.

Heavy as a field stone, I have sat and watched them circle
until I feel lifted, myself.
I catalog, I question, I make sketches,
but just lately and often,
my pen drops from my dangling hand, and I wake up hours later with the sun going down
and my work never finished.

I concern myself with genus, markings, and range.
They concern themselves with the ripeness of plums barely hanging on to branches
or already on the ground.
They concern themselves with hollowed-out trees or woven nests;
I concern myself with questions I can never truly understand the answers to,
even should I blunder across them.

There is a whirling, in the lateness of my days--
an oversharpening of the air, particularly in the early morning.
It was this time of year when you last came to see me,
and removed the sterling silver cuff I had given you,
with its delicate black flock flying from wrist bone to pulse point,
and set it upon my bed.
You told me that I was your heart,
but that you could never come back to me again.

I have devoted my life to the study of birds,
but anymore, my mind wanders.
There is only one thing I notice now, and that is the way that the autumn birds have
of relinquishing a deficient, unsustainable world
without a thought.
Instinct drives them, they simply lift, as one, and wheel,
spinning for a moment above my foolish head,
and then departing,
growing smaller until they are indistinguishable
soundless
phantoms,
as ephemeral as my breath in the chilly air.

_______

for Flipside's word list # 14 and Real Toads open link Monday.