The Birds

In Autumn small yellow birds peck at the rotting plums strewn in the mud
outside the window while raindrops fall lazily out of the heavens.
The wind that's been travelling south breifly howls down the road then is still
and the birds are untroubled, they carry on pecking the yellow plums.

These fragile creatures with their yellow breasts and their miniscule wings
belie the bleak landscape, as out of place as ripe plums pressed in cold mud.
Too friendly, these birds, they don't flee when I near them; I worry for them,
and realize I don't know the lifespans of wild birds, ones such as these.

Wild to think of the finches and sparrows, the titmouses, robbins,
and other such birds as descendants of creatures that, ages ago,
would flit among branches, alight on a limb near an overripe fruit,
primordial fruit of the trees of an unruly orchard, the fruit
of unpeopled wilderness, bearing no name but the ones that the birds
bestowed with their chirrups long ages before first our voices were heard.