August and September evenings they gather,
after fledglings have grown and gone, after
eating their daily weight in insects, before
they fly to South America for winter months--
begin to circle the old school's chimney stack.
High up, twittering, they call in each other
from across our city, last mosquitoes and early moths
snatched up as they turn and turn over the stack,
the parking lot, our small selves perched on rocks
or standing there, our tripods set up to catch 
the circle of smoke that they become as light
departs and they spiral down, the stragglers
joining in to drop, one by one by many one,
out of sight, into the dark lined with bodies
clinging to rough cement and we find our hearts,
caught in pandemic fear, lifted, enfolded,
brought home to rest in the kindred dark.
                        

It's November and I'm taking a leisurely half-hour  
to eat breakfast and watch the sun's rays fall through
the few leaves left--the colors rich as the burgundy
of a Chateau Mouton-Rothschild, orange as the navels
and Valencias in my bowl, yellow as the cornbread
in the iron skillet (its black as black as the locust trunks
behind the house). And the green that is left is a spatter
of grass wanting cutting, while a red twine of creeper
climbs the cherry trees, becoming a Renoir backdrop
to the life all around us: twitter of sparrows, chirp
of the same small chipmunk richly robed in his chestnut-
and-ermine striped coat, sitting up on his usual corner
of deck under our yew, eating his morning seeds left to him
by the grackles and jays, one at a time, delicately,
one eye on me while I finish my cornbread, my oatmeal;

though first, like me, he's washed his face with his paws,
and his coat, just as I've brushed and brushed my hair
into silver and gray; and together we watch the birds
come to the birdbath and feeder as we eat. Tuscan rust
of clay saucer, blue-sky shimmer of water, shining column
of grains holding harvest--waiting to see the chickadee
with his black cap and finicky habit of taking only one
sunflower seed a time, flying off to a branch to eat it
while the juncos in their frock coats sober-gray 
search below for millet seeds. I'm waiting, too,

to see again among the flock of sparrows in the yew
that one new one I've been glimpsing all week, come
to the feeder again with his flicker of white tail feathers
that mark him outsider among the chestnuts of the rest---
I've searched through Audubon's bird book to be sure
I can call his name—"hello, vesper sparrow!" Though
tomorrow I'll learn it's "goodbye" I should have said
to Brother chipmunk, who must be sleeping now for the winter
on his storehouse of seed while I breakfast with those
who have less need of my company in their squabbles over seed.
                        

Elizabeth Facetimes him once a week,
her friend's parrot, Percy, who bobs
and bobs until Elizabeth shows him
on her phone where her cat is, warming
itself on her iPad--then Percy settles down
to listen as she reads, with expression,
as the good librarian she once was, 
another chapter of Winnie the Pooh,
showing Percy the drawings of Pooh 
and Piglet braving the Hundred Acre Woods
or cheering up Eeyore as far as they're able--
he takes it in, an Amazon parrot who'll live
for forty to sixty years --and why didn't we
think to think that a bird with the smarts
of at least a four-year-old human child
wouldn't be as hungry for company 
as Pooh is for honey, and a librarian 
always eager to read a good story,
even confined to her apartment's rooms?