I don’t have a title for this one yet. I wrote it in response to this music for a Midsummer’s Music concert in Door County. I was told to just write in response to the music. Initially I tried to write a more philosophical poem, but it was junk. I really am more of a “moment” poet, The only thing is after I wrote this I got the program for the concert series, and this date has been headlined as “Lush and Thrilling Romantic Poetry.” I am not sure this poem qualifies. Do you think I should write another one? I also have to think of a title yet, and maybe I’ll revise the form. Not sure.
Our house is under siege.
Redbirds bombard us in flashes of hurtling red.
The male and female birds swoop together,
slipstreaming from the front to the back of our house.
Their seductive song pierces our attention -- chirrrp chirrrp chirrrp.
Cardinals are made to be seen with their sharp crests, seed-splitting beaks
and faces of intrigue.
She is tawny in her elegance and red-tinted wings.
The shadows in our house provoke them.
They divebomb our windows.
Their bodies ricochet against the glass, sounding eerily like flung boxes --
kerchunk rustle flap flap,
kerchunk rustle flap flap.
They are relentless.
They will not give up challenging the movement behind the glass.
They try every window.
Their desperation infects the house.
I can’t concentrate.
My husband mutters under his breath.
Every day I look more like my mother.
My husband researches their crazed behavior.
He would not bargain with my mother.
The female behaves the most deranged.
Her puffed up body is irate.
Who are these intruders?
Kerchunk rustle flap flap,
kerchunk rustle flap flap.
My husband puts a black X in each of our windows with electrical tape.
I am not the interloper.
The birds are stealing my peace.
My mother gave up in the end.
The cost of breathing was too much.
I think this will be how it winds down.
This will go and this will go, a gradual X-ing out
of abilities, inclination.
I smell the loamy earth as if from another kind of box.
The female perches in the chokeberry outside my window
and fixes me with her beady eye.
This knowing about death is the erraticism behind living.
Don’t you dare, the mother bird seems to suggest,
aiming for my window.