Fourteen Ways of Looking

Ginny Short

1. If the black eye of a bluebird moves, does this mean that the axis of the earth’s rotation remains stable?
2. People have a phenomenal ability to concoct justifications to do whatever they want to do. Strange logic for fulfilment of their desires. Unlike a bird of any color.
3. A man and a woman are no longer one. Even with a black bird.
4. The earth’s crust is buoyant, floating on a magma sea. How many lost species will capsize our fragile boat? Imagine life without a blackbird.
5. Biscayne, Blaine, Jacobsville, Marshall, Ordovician, Rush Springs, Seymour. Life-giving aquifers. A raven drinks from a spring on the desert highland.
6. A bird as black as death turns in circles above the earth. It cannot escape from the thermals as they spin.
7. The baseball diamond was a forlorn, emerald space in the summer dry spell. No one can play on the fenced grass. The blackbirds peck for insects on bare ground.
8. I found a black Condor feather near the breeding compound at the Los Angeles Zoo. It shone almost silver in the asphalt haze.
9. Can you misjudge sincerely? The earth’s climate is changing. The air is black with cawing birds. Ask that question of our children. Our grandchildren.
10. Incoming storms turn the sea graphite and the desert crimson. The green pines are filled with beetles; the trees are dying. The cedar tree has lost its black bird.
11. Our waters are poisoned. Dead birds litter the shores.
12. The geckos on my wall hunt for insects that fly towards the patio lights, yellow bodies camouflaged in yellow light. Their eyes are as black as a bluebird’s.
13. Today, here, the wind from the west is pungent with the smell of rotting garbage. We cough. Wheeze. A tear leaks. A bird’s black eye is permanently shrouded.
14. I was hiking with a friend and we found a dead body under a crumbling desert cliff. He died hiking alone. A black vulture soared high overhead.