Music in flight from the border tonight
and it’s pulling miles
of starlight behind it. Darkness
tuned to grosbeaks, orioles, homesick songs
and the Black-necked stilts
who come down at the golf course pond.
There’s an echo
to the ads between corridos
and the high romance that ends
in a flourish no matter
who stays and who leaves. The trogons
cross to occupy a canyon lined
with pine-oak where sycamores sing
to the daylight. Gray hawks
in the cottonwoods, tanagers where
the edge of woodland
overlooks a wide
and open valley dark priests occupied before
they named the land for
saints, and Black hawks looking down on it
from an indifferent sky.
Doves take back their city
for the summer in tune
with the natural order
of hunger and survival. 103.5, La Tricolor,
playing until morning and then
in the yard, russet crest and
greyly greened, the unmistakable
Trepador cola verde.
David Chorlton lives in Phoenix, Arizona. He writes, paints, and keeps track of which birds show up locally. Originally from Europe, he has learned that not all truth and beauty is to be found in museums and cathedrals (much as he enjoyed seeing them) but in wildlife.
