Fall-Winter 2007

Remembering the Bully Bird

LeAnn Spencer

Hello, bluejay
It’s been a while
since we’ve seen you.

Once you were
our backyard gangster,
flashy in blue and white,
tipped in black with
a crest for a crown.

Your bossy hawk screech
and incessant chatter
could not be ignored.
That damn bluejay, we’d say,
and the cardinals would scold.

Now my binoculars spy you
atop a charred sapling
at prairie’s edge,
profile awash in sun,
a pause in time.

Staring, we ask,
Where have you been?
We wish you had stayed.