Transcience

I join in anonymity of robins at sundown,
dark, interchangeable, in perch on bedroom tree.
Six at a time alight, rise, go for a fly,
return, their eggs unknown, their fledglings gone,
eyeing, significantly, at the window, me.

They have no names; only, for the night,
footage where nails can cling
and eyelids close . . .
They don’t count hours.
No recollection
of a sun that rose.
Alarmed, watch sun slink out
under its one black wing.

This day, a drill in the ephemeral,
gives up the ghost.
“We—you—” the robins pantomime:
“expect the same.”
Through falling dark, while I still can,
I call out to
my own old tucked-in emigrants by name.  

   Contributor’s notes   
   Eve
   Homesick in Paradise
   Lawrence at the Etruscan Tombs
   R.J.
   Three Days in Flower
   When to Stop

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