Lark Sparrow
       

Let me be drawn to you
and not the elusive Yellow-billed cuckoo.
Rather than the colorful dozens feeding
in the understory of the broad-leafed trees,
specifically the villainous red-eyed vireo,
I prefer your symmetrical beak
navigating the side-oats, your chestnut cheek and brow,
the white around your slick black eye.
Yours is a Clark Kent cheer, or a purer sorrow.

The swallows with their shining superhero-purple heads
ride their invisible roller coasters, ridiculous all day,
and the wrens ascend and descend like nervous angels
their ubiquitous ladders, while along the river
the supercilious kingfishers complain.
But you, my nearly unadorned, you shun the coasts
and line the cup of your well-made nest
with grass and one sun-bleached straw wrapper.
You sing on your low perch when you are satisfied.

Enslaved to your plain behavior,
how could I forget you choose to share
the field with me? You choose the earth.
Let the earth be dust beneath our feet
and each occasional flight.

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Copyright © 2020 John Poch All rights reserved
from Texases
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Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission