Lakeside Bird Feeder, First Day

It should’ve taken only that scouting,
squawking jay to get the word out.

Framed in a pane, on a perch,
he was posed, a post card, puffed

against the brittle cold. His stylish
scarf feathers flicked an impatient face,

and his scruffy topknot signaled
who knew who in the neighborhood:

“Easy Supreme and Sunflower Mélange
swinging free off this deck!” See, he’d need

some wirier guys to stir it up, to urge
the tiny silo to flowing so he could

swoop in, scoop out the run-off: “Anyone
game enough to give it a go?” But, no.

And now, not a single soul for supper.

Mallards, Mounted on a Chimney Wall

I’ve a vague idea how they ended up
these two hundred lovely feet from shore,
this side of the tall double panes, veering

over the owners’ photos propped on a mantle,
over an old golden retriever twitching now
on his sheepskin rug. So I doubt it was due

to the wrenching updraft depicted
in their implausible contortions, the bunched
shoulders of their posed wings.

As mild chili simmers and Mozart saws
an easy soundtrack, they strive flat
against fine brick, forever matching

their sapphire chevrons, the shriveled orange
leaves of their feet. Meanwhile,
the drake’s clamped beak and his

wild dark eye seem to be carving
today’s northwest wind as if to permit
his trailing hen her subtle luxury

of squinting—as if, in wrestling her fixed
pin of fate, she entertains the greatest questions:
Why are we here? Where are we going?

Will we ever arrive? And, in a far softer thought
that has me perched on this hearthside chair,
my ear tiptoed to her dusty brain:

Why does it have to be me?

Lakeside Bird Feeder, Squirrels

Now if I had ambition I’d be
this kung fu squirrel, this lighter one,
this Jackie Chan, scaling stucco

to ledge to chimney to the hovering skid
of the evil whiz kid’s waffling chopper,
perpetual motion my only gear,

my sidekick wacky as this blacker one,
who tries but can’t quite nab his half
of the substantial stash. Their

choreography is manic, their fight scenes
replete with wall-walking, roof leaping,
jumps across gaps and gorges—all

their own improv’d stunts, every feat
a fleeting, one-take opportunity. It’s
those reflexes that make the difference:

when gravity catches their rare missteps
they can spin around an inch-thick span
of diagonal steel or the slippery rim

of a seed-spill dish, always squirming
all four feet first—whereas I’d just drop,
back-ass-down to the unforgiving earth,

my spindly claws and my mangy tail
spread like a shredded chute, a plea
for anyone at all to catch me. So,

I’ll leave these antics to my friends,
for today, the squirrels, until I can find
a way to foil them, deter them from

this wintertime welfare I’ve intended
for the birds, whose more manageable
business will give me the docile pleasure

I’ve been seeking: sitting here in a chair,
swathed in luscious listlessness, slinging
these escape lines toward anywhere I wish.

Field Notes from an Old Chair

Well, they’ve come, these early crews
though it’s only March, which in Michigan
means maybe warm one day,
the few new tender greens making

sense, then frigid and snow the next four,
fragile bodies ballooned, all fuzz
but feeding and competing just the same.
Who would’ve ever guessed you’d be happy

anticipating birds? Since you’ve taken up
the old folks’ study of how certain species
seem to like each other, showing up in sync
like the field guides specify, your chair’s

been scribing the short, inside arc between the feeder
and where you’ll catch a bloody sun going down.
Then, mornings, if you forget, two doves startle you
when you startle them from a window well,

and as if the titmice and chickadees,
finches and nuthatches can read
they trade places on perches all day—
size, you notice, and no doubt character

determining order, amount, duration.
At this point you could’ve written the pages
on juncos or on your one song sparrow so far,
plumped and content to peck along the deck beneath.

And that pair of cardinals you’d hoped for?
They’ve set up shop somewhere in the hedgerows
and for now eat together, appearing
to enjoy each other’s company, while all above

out back crows crisscross the crisp expanse
between the high bones of trees
and the high ground that runs the dune down
to the loosened shore. Soon hawks will hover,

and when a bloated fish washes up overnight,
luring vultures to join the constant, aimless
gulls, you’ll be amused you ever worried
that the birds would never come.

Lakeside Bird Feeder, Wet Snow

Like the trusty railing, the congenial
patio table, the steady deck itself,
and every firm crotch
in every faithful tree, the feeder’s
become a sculpture.

I should have black and white to lace
into the camera to capture
this transubstantiation, this emergence
from the overnight dark and storm,
an aesthetic thing in itself,
dangling like an earring
from the gaunt lobe of a different day—
a white arrow, squirrel-emptied,
aimed straight for the flat sky.

The first little bird to find it, sunup,
can only inquire, perch
and jerk a nervous while,
then quickly move along
in wired hopes the other stops
around the circuit will service
his tiny entitlement, will be
scraped clean and waiting
like a retired guy’s double drive.

By tomorrow I know this wind
and another early thaw
will have de-transmorphed my feeder
to its manufactured purpose,
its slick roof and Plexiglass siding
once again resembling an urbane
enticement to things wild, some Nature
available outside a backdoor slider.

And I know I’ll have also lost
more impetus for believing
in permanence—except
of the impermanent, its exceptional
knack for nourishing the dazzle
in this everyday desire.

I Don’t Know the Biochemistry of a Hummingbird

I can only wonder
at this blurred
whir of evidence, clouded
in the blue fan
of a thousand
wings. I want
to feel
their million beats
per second on my beard
and lashes, reel
from each swig,
the dozen
manic intervals,
stomach a zoom
to the forsythia, whose
scream of tender yellow
faded and fell
last week.
How
can mere filaments
in tiny shoulders flex
and reflex so fast?
How
can miniscule
sipping, the sucking
through a needle beak,
fuel a miniature tyrant’s
relentless burn?
Then, in the resting,
which is not even
a breath,
how rapid
the saturation
of liquid sugar
into blood, into
wing muscle, into
instinctual motive
for a horizontal
life? And how rapid
the depletion?

D. R. James, retired from nearly 40 years of teaching university writing, literature, and peace studies, lives with his psychotherapist wife in the woods near Saugatuck, Michigan, USA. His latest of ten collections are Mobius Trip and Flip Requiem (Dos Madres Press, 2021, 2020), and his work has appeared internationally in a wide variety of anthologies and journals.

You can find more of D. R. James’ work here on Ink Pantry.