This March morning
I watched the first family of the white house
nailed, so hopefully, to a tree last autumn.

I knew they were sparrows,
one that flew out
and back in
and out,
the mainstay warbler on the front porch
between windows and red shutters like a maitre d,
two that darted to and from the blue roof.

I could not tell, though, whether they
were seaside
or song
or savannah.

My birder friend, Barbara, could;
she called breathless about
a Swainson's thrush she knew
was not a hermit or veery.

I took the dusty little house home
from a friend's garage
we cleaned one drizzly day.
His father used to be in sawdust,
a constant woodworker
until his wife got the Parkinson's.

I learned a male sparrow sings
twenty melodies on one May morning,
improvises a thousand variations
by day's end. That is just
for courtship.

(c) 2006 Michael A. Tempesta

Finally, our promise kept,
a Plymouth walk
then an Indian restaurant.

She is from Erie,
was caretaker at Penzance Point
when we met in the market.

I complimented her biceps
as she lifted organic tomatoes,
from canoeing, she said,
and we agreed to do that, soon.

Two years later
I introduce her to the Rock.
We stand and try to count
the pennies gone green.

Beside the sea
she points to a Merganser
just before it plunges in
then a Bufflehead,
giggles when I call her Britannica.

We wind past a mill,
watch duck couples,
velvet-green-headed male
mulch brown female,
both calm and frenzied against current.

Mallards, I know,
I fed them popcorn and balled
Sunbeam and Wonder
as a boy beside the Charles.
Older, we parked our cars there,
called it "making out at the ducks.”

On a wooden bridge
above the cattails
next to a Do Not Feed Fowl sign,
as I consider the take
of her hand, she describes
plans to move back to Pennsylvania.
  
It was simpler with the bags
of soft, white bread, car radio, long kisses.

(c) 2006 Michael A. Tempesta