My blue jay friends are back, tap-dancing on my balcony to get my attention, peering accusingly through the living room windows until I get up to fetch the peanut dish. There are many, many more blue jay poems in my future. Here’s one from the past. (This post first appeared in March of 2022).
Many of my poems are not autobiographical, but this one is. I can still remember that moment: the early-morning air, the flash of blue. The pang I felt.
In the intervening years I’ve gotten to know blue jays much better as a species and as individuals. I’ve spent endless hours reading about them, watching them, talking to them, and listening. I’ve studied an audio glossary of jay calls and songs in the vain hopes of learning to understand at least a little of their language. Still, the birds of this poem have their own private, gleaming little niche in my memory, vivid and tender as a bruise.
Right Then Ransacking the grass at the edge of the parking lot, the loveliest jay I’ve ever seen. His features, so fine. His blues, so bright. He cocks his crest at my idling car : I sigh behind the wheel. He screams. Another bird flutters down. She is smaller than her mate, her neck feathers mute and iridescent as shade-grown violets. Two hops and he is gone into the brambles. She follows : Right then. That’s when I miss you.
*
Image via Unsplash. A version of this poem originally appeared in Passionfruit.
I’ve been pondering the mysteries of love and came to LWON for a diversion. Your poem like a tarot card flipped over suggests a direction for me to go in. Maybe.
Thanks, Kate!
Rachel, I’m so glad the poem felt timely, but even more than that, I’m intrigued! Of course you don’t have to share if you don’t want to, but I am very curious about your reading of this blue card…
It’s possible that, as you were posting this, I was feeding the Steller’s jays on my back deck. There are 6 who keep a close eye on my railing, and they appear in a raucous swirl as soon as I retreat through the kitchen door. One particularly intrepid bird appears throughout the day, perching outside the kitchen window. When it sees us, it crouches to look small and helpless, and fluffs its feathers into a slightly goth orb. It’s all an act, though, as it shrieks joyously as soon as the peanuts appear, summoning the rest of the flock.
They are very, very good at screaming. And goth orb-ing. My life would be poorer without them.