BElow the wide window of the dining room
is spread the slant roof of the well-house.
The previous owners kept cracked corn there
through twenty winters, and the birds
came to rely on it. We thought they ought
to live more wild, and so we did refrain
awhile. The birds came to the empty roof
and stood about, cranking their small heads
to look with first one eye and then the other
into the house; had their gods abandoned them?
I stopped by the seed and feed, and picked up
a ten pound bag. A handful on the roof
brought instant jubilation. Each day
first come the juncos in their black hoods,
perched taut and wary in the lilac bush; then
one by one they dart for a choice bit
and retreat, cracking and dribbling hulls.
They are followed by field sparrows in red
caps, and rose-colored purple finches.
Black-capped chickadees appear when these
have gone, and heavy-bodied mourning doves
crash and scatter them, bobbing like gulls
on a green beach. None can dislodge the doves
but jays: scrub and Stellar's. I tell
the children of the habits of jays, stealers
of eggs, bullies. The middle child hates
injustice, and claims he will shoot the jays.
I tell him a story. In Georgia, when I
was his age, I watched a cat catch a robin.
The robin fluttered and cried, and the cat
clamped down, muscles bulked. A mockingbird
flew low and strafed, and the cat missed a hold.
The robin crawled off, trailing breakage.
The cat pounced again. The mockingbird
perched nearby, screaming. A cardinal,
biggest I had ever seen, parrot-bright,
flew in from nowhere and landed, wings outspread
almost in the cat's face, and began,
one wing down, the dance of bird mothers
who hope to divert cats from nestlings.
The cat dropped the robin and went
for the cardinal, missing by a whisker.
This was repeated many times, but the robin
was dying, so the cardinal had in the end
to give it up. But I have never forgotten
that strange unequal battle, and a bird
that would so risk life for another species.
The boy seems unimpressed. I add: the cardinal
is a jay. He gets it: life is not so simple
as its known and quantified habits. Out there
on the well-house roof, or in our own lives,
or anywhere, bad we can expect, but good,
if rare, comes also, and so we scatter
seed, then sit by the window and wait.