Cardinal

In this weather!

How do you protect the birds from flying into the windows? There are many techniques, but they don’t always work. And did you know that glass is a liquid? I was surprised when I learned that. It’s why old windows look wavy. They’re literally dripping. Not necessarily important to the poem, but interesting, yes?

Cardinal 

A cardinal hit the glass
and lies now on its platter of snow, 
legs struck upwards
little drumstick-band on each one.

We stuck paper owls to the upper windows—
what more could we do?—all this glass
at the edge of woods, 
by which we try to have it both ways.

Sometimes they’re dead, sometimes
they blink at last and row home. 
But this one lies there, limbs in air,
in front of glass that holds itself
primly up, for our lifetime,
before it begins to droop and weep,
being fluid, the most viscous of all fluids.

We won’t have stayed in our lives, by then,
anyway, no matter how much I’d like 
to keep us both safe within our boundaries, 
except for the one side leaving 
a little sunflower seed, the other 
a little excitement of red.
            --An old poem, who knows how old. Unpublished.