it’s easy to miss the juncos’ slow, sudden departure in spring;
messengers from colder warming worlds
they arrive a dulling autumn:
peppering notations of life in a landscape encased,
each deep dark demitasse
brewed on increasingly tardy dawns
painting a night sky inverted
standing ankle deep in first snows
searching for leftover springs beneath the detritus
but then they finally emerge with the warblers,
orioles, robins, and buntings
and pointillism fades beneath impressionist palettes
that flash over treetops and underbrush
but the last juncos linger:
quiet familiar trills outside my window each morning
disrupting stillness till it disappears
an ode to the dark-eyed junco
i just ******* love birds idk what else you need to know. about time i wrote a proper poem about them
