pond of flashing koi and sleep-frogs, needles
and beetles chase to hang combined midair
duckling-hungry jaws of the snapping turtle
from silt and tangle snatch the feathered
heart—an innocent stray from parent’s watch
the sycamore blooms with indigo buntings and tanagers
industrial birds in funerary or finery meet
their mating needs, chatter or squawk with the nip
of a bug or the tuck of a nest or a fuck in the bush
but I, old magpie, covet the shiny thing that taunts
my restless eye—calls from the broken line in the highway
with the glisten of unbidden—though my wings tire and ache
I swoop to the asphalt and the capture
but a delivery van closes in with the finality of white
.
David Quintavalle
.