they are very rough when they sing their vibratos are intergalactic high and zigzagged with enormous BOOMS! and crash into sky and into Earth
but on Earth they translate the sounds to be birds and bird wings—they’ve come to call it: an ornithological phenomenon how these tiny bodies can emit crashing sounds from their larynx and feathers and make them echo around the solar system is a mystery or two
but no one suspects them on top of their mountains surrounded by red sand tracked with utility vehicles, rovers, so succulent-free that you aim to drink the earth and blink when their proximals help them float against a martian cold
they bring to the desert false colours; hues of yellows, greens, and purples and behind them they leave feathers, ticklish things to be found by astronaut-scientists citizens of sand and rocks which accumulate as field notes tell of their history: they won’t be catalogued but they will be arranged by locality
i used to catalogue birds and hold their bones in my hands. they will outlast us.