TheBanyanTree: watching cardinals

[Mike Pingleton]

the red gang arrives,
brown doxies attending,
taking over the bones
of the flowering crab
while snow slants down
and wind waltzes the feeder.

I can’t see the eyes
in their black-masked faces,
the little crimson punks,
fire-bellied shark-heads,
staring at me, the dark figure
window-framed in orange light.

in twos and threes they swoop
to seed piles on deck planks
jostling by some hidden roster,
shouldering in with the squirrels,
shoving sparrows aside as
dusk arrives on a dimmer switch.

shying from some unseen threat
one male flies the wrong way,
thonking the window glass
and toppling on his side,
twigged legs twitching in tandem.
I wait for them to stop.

the red flame rights himself.
the bright beaks hasp as it gasps,
stars fade and eyes clear,
and the little phoenix flies away,
to the evergreen where the thicket birds
sleep this time of year.