Blue Jay
Pestering the songbirds,
a scold in the Shumard oak.
A coroner gives me a BB gun,
says “scare ‘em away.”
I’ve never shot anything
but aim for a jay in the canopy.
I wing it, it falls spiraling
left to the ground. Stunned.
My friend has to finish it
with the flat end of a shovel.
Audubon killed his birds,
his volume of avian dead.
This poem in memoriam:
a feather pressed into the page.
Cedar Waxwing
Unmistakable on the side porch:
the black mask, the blue tail
with a yellow band at the end,
the wings with red tips.
I wait for it to move, but no,
next to the sliding glass door
the scenario is clear, collision
and death. Nature morte.
I spread the wings
as if in flight, carrying its soul
to the underworld.
It’s too delicate to cast
into the woods with the dead koi
who did not survive last winter.
Originally from Los Angeles, MICHAEL HARDIN lives in rural Pennsylvania with his wife, two children, and two Pekingeses. He is the author of a poetry chapbook, Born Again (Moonstone Press 2019), and has had poems published in Seneca Review, Connecticut Review, North American Review, Quarterly West, Gargoyle, Texas Review, Tampa Review, among others. He has recently finished his memoir, Touched.
Twyckenham Notes 