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STANLEY PLUMLY
Still Missing the Jays
Then this afternoon,
in the anonymous
winter hedge, I saw one. I'd just climbed,
in my sixty-year-old body—with its heart
attacks, kidney stones, torn Achilles tendon,
vague promises of ulcers, various subtle,
several visible permanent scars, ghost-
gray hair, long nights and longer silences,
impotence and liver spots, evident
translucence, sometime short-term memory loss—
I'd just climbed out of the car and there
it was, eye-level, looking at me, young,
bare blue, the crest and marking jewelry
penciled in, smaller than it would be
if it lasted but large enough to show
the dark adult and make its queedle
and complaint. It seemed to wait for me,
watching in that superciliary way
birds watch too. So I took it as a sign,
part spring, part survival. I hadn't seen a jay
in years—I'd almost forgotten they existed.
Such obvious, quarrelsome, vivid birds
that turn the air around them crystalline.
Such crows, such ravens, such magpies!
Such bristling in the spyglass of the sun.
Yet this one, new in the world,
softer, plainer, curious. I tried
to match its patience, not to move,
though when it disappeared to higher ground,
I had the thought that if I opened up my hand—
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