Found a dead bird on the rented back porch on Rice Lake.
Found it. Not encountered it. More like: glad we did not not see it. It looked taxidermied, intentional.
A sparrow. What kind? No one knew. We looked for telltale
signs. Almost wrote sings. We are worse witnesses for death
than for life. We saw yellow where there was not-yellow.
We said a few words—not to honour it, nor even
its species, neither of which we recognized, rather—
in honour all birds and the drop of blood on the
improbable tip of its beak. Be-right red but not in
the process of dripping. So many ways for it to not be human. But what if it was? The what-iffing
of zoology, eulogy. Then the mate, the thing
with feathers on the un-yellowing pine tip/our tongues.
Hope, baby, hope, in the chillest land. My little girl sings signs “I love birds.” I lied about the cause of life.
