My preschool daughter 
tells me she doesn’t want to grow up. 
She wants to grow down and be a bird.

I unload the dryer and dump warm laundry 
over her worm-wriggling body on the bed 
as the phone rings and it’s Tai 
who says he woke up this morning beside Alicia 
who was dead and he should have recognized 
her little fade-out episodes as transient ischemic attacks 
but it never occurred to him because she’s only 34 
and now Alicia’s dead and what should he do? 

He’s in Jamaica; I’m in California 
so there’s not much I can offer 
except to say I’m so sorry. 
She was so wonderful. 
What a shock. 
I’m so very sorry.

And she with a sock tangled in her hair,
she who heard, 
who sees water on my cheeks 
says sometimes birds fly into glass windows
and bonk their beaks 
and that’s the bad part about birds.

narrow for cars, wide for walking.
Me and my dog step to the side 
for a Harley that stops.

Helmeted, hairy, 
a man with a woman in tandem
asks directions to Apple Jacks, our local dive bar. 
I begin to explain, pause looking up 
as a hawk, Cooper’s I believe,
pursued by a blue jay 
passes silently overhead 
almost near enough to touch.
A spirit so large seems closer than true.

Jays of smaller spirit harass hawks. 
Harass, in fact, everything.

My dog once pounced playfully killing 
a fledgling jay that dropped from a nest 
hopping not yet able to fly,
the dog momentarily puzzled
though not saddened by the death.

Sorry, I say to the man and woman,
I was watching a hawk.
Yes, the man says, a beauty.
We share this random bond an instant
as the Cooper seeming to scowl 
settles on a branch ahead.

My dog patiently waits eating grass,
the jay still squawking. As I explain 
the turns to the tavern, the hawk again 
with a shrug of feathers takes wing. 
Man woman and I lift our heads, 
a posture not of prayer but of worship, 
and we watch.