Stellar Jay

That’s a stellar jay. They don’t usually come this early,

he says when I call out to him what has happened,

a blue bird alighting on a branch,

musings on its mind, whirling above it.

Does it know, for example, that it has arrived before winter,

or that it has arrived at all;

did any sentry of nature ever ask our permission

in advance of visitation?

Tieta may have wondered, more than a week ago now,

with what resolve we would bury her;

body no longer shaking, throat relaxed, was she comforted

or horrified? She felt my mother’s pain follow her out, perhaps.

The people were looking askance at the wind

intentionally almost as the detritus of the city

was blown up over the freeway like a spider skein,

blurring their faces behind windows;

in winter advisory weather they walked, poring over concrete, and

from Ubers, wondering uncertainly what prompted such cold.

And we are now in the time when, across country, the Kentucky

Department of Fish and Wildlife has stated that it is

unclear exactly what circumstances led up to a buck’s

carrying around another set of antlers;

they don’t usually keep the deceased so close, the living,

though they try.

Perhaps the deer would be bewildered to know that

its head has fused with kin,

an amalgam of antlers a sieve for souls, strengthening

as it decomposes, wind passing it through, but

it was never intended for us to know in the first place, I think

farther along, which is why Papa’s reply is always simple.

Amongst nature we’ve no occasion for, we press on

imagining above us something inordinately close.