following the butterflies south

                                     -Vievee Francis, “Visiting the House on Long Island”


What shall we do before dinner? 
Lie in a part of the lawn we’re not used to, 
remark how milky the clouds, 
the few starlings, our vertebrae laid out 
along the actual earth like baby shoes.

Bought a book on the beginning of the universe,
with a DNA strand of stars on the cover. 
Last night you touched it, 
said it looks like angel wings. 
Or maybe you said bat wings.

                                                                  We 
look at the stars as if they’re not enough.

*

       Birds have four color receptors. Humans three, of which one of mine is defective, making
       me colorblind. They can pick up a track of mole urine where we can only see green lawn. 
       If we sit still long enough, hawks come close.

*

When a waitress sprays the next table 
she’s trying to get you to hurry up, leave. 
She has a warm home of her own. 

Walking she’ll think how soon 
autumn came. Stars like dragonflies 
will cut here and there, waiting 
some moments above us. 

To be a child again, the universe reduced 
to the size of our room and being put to bed
in the early night. One strip of orange light 
beneath the door, stars 
and trees up in the window.

The universe is a funnel, they say. 
Some of us crammed down the tight end. 
It’s hard to breathe. And then there’s Mom. 
She found us beneath a tree, formed 
our hands from mud between 
the roots, knuckles from knuckles.

*

        Turkey vultures’ featherless heads, while grotesque-looking, help keep them hygienic, as
        the gore slips off more easily than feathers would allow. The acid in their digestive system
        kills most bacteria, so they’re better carrion devourers than dogs or rodents. On our bike
        trip we saw clouds of redwing blackbirds, a red-tailed hawk that swooped us, and a turkey
        vulture perched beside the trail watching us. I was most excited by the vulture. I waved as
        we passed.

*

Passing the garbage can ribboned off with 
Beware Hornets I turned to you and said, 
Be careful, there’re hornets in there. 

As we lay on the lawn two weeks 
overdue for mowing, you point
at the first star in the sky, say help us. 

I feel a bug—
                      something with rows of legs—
crawl from your shoulder to mine 
without touching the ground.

in the same way black holes, after giving 
all of their energy, simply evaporate, 
the same fate awaits every single atom

*

        Crows, unlike other birds, hunt in couples. There’s more than anecdotal evidence some
        birds lift burning twigs from wildfires to drop elsewhere, create new fires, then wait to
        catch the fleeing creatures. We used to believe using fire separated us from other animals.

*

One crow calling into 
another’s open mouth.
I cry into yours. Night 
recognizing night.

Purple and sweet white violets. People 
deny the existence of the big bang, 
confuse gravity with a trampoline, 
reply reply reply.
                                   All this sky
all this air in which to fly. Today 
it’s insects. Tonight or tomorrow 
one of those swans with nine-foot 
wingspans we still have around.

*

        When a chickadee feels under threat it adds final dees to its call—and you can actually
        measure how under threat it feels by counting how many final chick-a-dee-dee-dee-dees
        etc. there are. The size of the predator bird doesn’t determine the danger. Chickadees are
        small agile birds, so a big hawk or owl they might outmaneuver. A smaller, equally agile
        predator, however, will have them slapping on the extra dee-dee-dees.

*

Some learn the calls of native birds. 
Some cover their vulnerable bushes with 
wooden A-frames so when winter comes 
they’re not crushed.

The startled sparrow in my chest 
pressed to the startled sparrow in yours. 

Last night, little stars—the kind you see 
at sea—falling around us 
as you told me about your day. 
I chopped garlic, told you about mine. 

Like sweet birds,
bread in the mouth.

*

        The Superb Lyrebird (so named for its widely-fanned tail feathers) is the best mimic in the
        world of birds. There’s an Attenborough clip on YouTube where one replicates the calls of
        the kookaburra and several other birds, then a camera shutter, then a camera shutter with
        motorized film winder, then a car alarm, then chainsaws. They can copy the calls of a
        whole group of birds yelling simultaneously. 

*

Here, you said, let’s lie in the grass 
and look up through the cedar. Yes, I said, 
putting the prosecco aside, lowering my skull 
like a glass flute into the clover. 

Birds with the biggest eyes 
sing first in the morning.

I think the sea an animal 
because that’s how I can fit 
my ideas around fear.

*

        Birds make contact calls to keep in touch with each other, often while they’re foraging for
        food. These sounds are usually short, quick, and quiet, though if birds get separated, they
        may make louder, more urgent “separation calls.”

*

                                         The nothing 
pinching each star hotter. 
                                    The suns—
they sun harder inside.

Because of the atmosphere, life exists, sticks 
to earth because we’re each of us 
with our arms raised, fingers 
pressed into it, curled in and holding.

*

        “Tomorrow October Arrives,” “The Heart a Walking Bird,” and “We Have These Words the
          Wind Needles.”

*

The crow I watch screaming
in the dead pine—black on silver.
You find a feather in the long grass,
press its point into the earth. 

It does that thing feathers can do
where it looks shiny, small, and 
like the whole sky above us.

Incessant beeping in the distance . . . not 
a new bird but a truck backing up.

*

        It isn’t just birds in tropical locations that mimic. A simple blue jay can make the hunting
        shriek of a red-tailed hawk. I heard this last week carrying wine bottles (nine) into the
        house. One piercing, descending call that makes your spine tighten. If I were a mouse I'd
        wet myself. I’m not a mouse and I felt scared anyway. My friend Jeff threw a “wig party”
        once, where everyone had to come in a wig. I bought a metallic red bob. Short and
        straight. It looked like knives in the night.

*

In the cosmos, stars zing from one another 
like raisins in rising muffins. How we imagine 
everything removing from everything else 
in all directions. Goodbye, everything, always. 

When I step away from this patch of grass 
I’ve warmed, I’ll be moving closer to you.