Morning silence broken,
background sounding, “THUMP, BUMP!”
comes from the pantry,
something moving sharply
in a rhythm – “BUMP, THUMP.”
I interrupt my work
to bring back morning hush,
go to the pantry,
look out the window, find
a cardinal in the bush.
The window reflection
says he has a rival,
an intruder with no
business here and vague
hope of his survival
First, the cardinal pecks
a polite, “Please be gone.
My family lives here.
You’ve invaded our home.
We wish to be alone.”
The Shadow Bird remains,
repeats polite pecking.
What Cardinal does,
the Shadow Bird echoes,
looks to be home-wrecking.
Now, Cardinal’s angry.
This imposter’s cheating –
one thing left to do –
get a running start, give
Shadow Bird a beating.
All day, Cardinal fights
the Shadow Bird – “THUMP, BUMP!”
Closing the pantry door,
we muffle the volume
of his racket – “bump, thump!”
This composition was brought on by a cardinal who claims ownership of the bush outside our pantry window. When he began his noisy all-day fight with his reflection, I googled how we could stop him. The suggestion was to draw the blind so his image disappeared. However, he only took himself to the living areas of the house to fight yet another image. We decided to lift the blind and close the pantry door to muffle the sound to a mild roar.
I have been amused at the uselessness of the bird fighting something that didn’t really exist, thinking how much smarter I was than Cardinal. I would never be so foolish – or would I? That led me to recall times I’ve missed opportunities in anticipation of what could possibly go wrong and the times I’ve worried about things that never happened. Maybe, I’m not smarter than he is after all.