When you talk to the bee-eaters they pretend
you are not there. You can follow them
into Madagascar & across the Mozambique
Chanel & still not register
an acknowledgment. This is sad because you
mean no harm & you have taken
great pains to mimic their trills, chuckles,
& whistles. Just to hear Darwin
speak of them, you know that the scythe
of their bills is made for the erratic
snatch of wings midflight, &, as the wings
are indigestible, they eject them. This is
not to say that bee-eaters sugar their songs
with upbeats before disgorging—far
from it. Sometimes they beat the bee
against a branch, then croak. You are
surprised that a diet of stingers yields a rain-
bow plumage, but, given one more reason
to quail, you hardly blush. The mistake
is to imagine on moonlit nights
you are one of them.

Tonight—in the foundering night, at least,
of imagination, where what I don’t in fact
believe anymore, all the same, is true—

the stars look steadily down upon me. I look
up, at the stars. Life as a recklessly fed bonfire
growing unexpectedly more reckless seems
neither the best nor worst of several choices
within reach, still. I wear on my head a crown

of feathers—among which, sure, I have had
my favorites. Fear, though, is the bluest feather,
and it is easily the bluest feather that the wind loves most.