Male Phainopepla — Image by kenne
He is so high in the mesquite
I must squint—
An ace of spades caught in thorns.
Yet I feel the small red spark
of his eye
fasten to me.
The branch yields, does not surrender.
My grandmother said
real strength makes no announcement;
it simply remains.
He falls—
a swift stroke of black—
and rises again
to the same waiting limb.
Nothing altered, it seems.
But the desert keeps a breath
between his leaving and return,
and in that held silence
my heart shifts,
quiet as sand
after the wind.
— kenne
