IMMORTAL BIRDS

There’s a battered scrub jay lives

in the lemon tree in my back yard,

has a voice like tin snips dragged

across a steel file. He must think

he’s a choral director; the mockers

join in to become an oratorio

of teamsters punching out.

I thought when I left Detroit

to head west I would find groves

of orange trees, a vast land tilting

slowly toward the severe peaks

of the Sierra Nevada, I thought

I’d left the corrugated world

behind in Flint and Wyandotte.

Where are the fabled birds we

read about? Miguel Hernández

climbed a tree in the Atocha park

so that Neruda might hear the song

of the nightingale. My jay jabs

his thick beak into a lemon, gargles,

and croaks out the anthems of Ecorse.