Today's poem is by Becka Mara McKay

I Asked an Ornithologist
       

if birds ever lie when they sing their courtship
songs, like the guys who used to hit on me
at Liquor Lyle's. Car in the shop, they said,

showing some teeth. Anybody home
at your place? Birds, I learned, can't exactly
lie, though they might exaggerate. They build

their songs like they build their nests, with what
their beaks can find and weave into a pleasing
shape. Outside my window, a cardinal

steeples the atmosphere with his trills,
which are both invitation and prayer,
the sort of prayer recited after reprieve,

for a ceasefire that lasts, the sky again
inviolate, carrying only the weather
to the weather's next home. The cardinal

declares himself in song, daring
any bird to do better. Who am I
to judge those men who swayed toward me

on their barstools? They didn't owe me
all of their truths. The cardinal is not
a liar, but a kind of scientist,

a recorder of daylight, measuring
every hour between dawn and dusk
by how much song he can fit inside the air.

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Copyright © 2023 Becka Mara McKay All rights reserved
from Salt Hill
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission