April 17th morning.
Black in the garage window,
gleam of my red corolla.
A chickadee
I could hear in bed earlier, but I don’t hear it now.
Car tires on asphalt
two hundred yards away on Summit.
My wife Robin
knows all the neighborhood birds by their songs.
I’m hearing a monotonous chip chip to my right,
to my left a descending pee-you, whit-whit-whit,
followed by a rapid chirp like a frog in a pond.
Robin said she could hear a cardinal,
and maybe that’s what I’m hearing to my left:
What a show-off!
But she couldn’t hear the chickadee I was hearing
as we lay together in bed this morning.
Robin’s off birding right now with friends.
I wonder if she’ll be able to identify the bird to my left
from my deaf-and-dumb description when she gets home.
There’s the chickadee:
Bee-ber.
