Although there are several possibilities,
I could not be sure
of the bird’s name in the bird book
(not written by birds,
and me no expert) not to mention the bird’s name
in the bird’s own tongue we could not repeat
for the shape and chisel of sounds

in their language so unlike our own.
I have heard a bird laugh and one full of praise
for the sun and another one’s voice afraid
warning me (or the crow) to stay away
from her nest, and another with a cry so piercing
quiet (I could not let it out of my head) about the spirit
of her species brought low by humans into a gold mine
situation on earth where they’d lived longer than we
had, before the last ice age with their dinosaur cousins.

You moved to pick the green fellow up on the edge
of a shovel (afraid to snap a frightened wing in capturing
her in cupped hands – the bird could have been ‘him,’
the green quite vivid) but he flit to the branch above
and so I think the green soul was merely tired out

after navigating over cities and skyscrapers
confusing lights and changed terrain (a creek
with reeds dug up, now a muddy canal) resting
between flights on his long journey to the south.
Or maybe he ate some seed brittle with glitter
of some fungicide, all that was left
in the combined field. Although
there are several possibilities
we could not be too sure…

A sleek green body light as a feather, hollow-boned
but pulsing spirited with small sad peepers,
half shut and giving up, I feared
as I peered down at her.

© gillian harding-russell
Regina, Saskatchewan

First published in Grain, Spring 2020