Bluejay

Into the calm of morning as a stone breaks
the surface of a pond, where zinnias
uphold stiff colors and the air rises
in summer waves, a bluejay screeches.

In the oak’s green house he cocks his head,
shuttered by leaves he strikes the view
with hungry eyes, alerted on his perch
by the sentinels of survival.

Look, deep in the corner of a pine tree,
a stir, tremble, a bequeath to his patience,
a robin leaves her nest of fledglings
and this appetite shaped in blue and white
closes its aim.

The mother wheels and cries, her ransacked home
bleeds in silence, the morning sighs on,
a cry harsh as metal triumphs, wings out
from the darkness of instinct on a bright day.