The Birds

Driving a dirt road, a man 
and his wife see flashes 
of a yellow like a new crayon, 

then a blue so brightly 
royal that the husband stops 
as if the bird were a traffic light.

Actually there are three 
birds, this otherworldly 
blue one, perched on a roadside

bramble so close to their car 
they can see its tufted head 
and orange beak, then a little

farther away the yellow 
with black-barred wings, 
and down in the road gravel

like some scrufly cousin, 
a plain sparrow, a bird 
of so little distinction

they ignore it altogether. 
Years after their divorce, 
the husband remembers

that afternoon and what 
a gift they took the birds 
to be—his wife talked

so happily about how 
long she could still see 
the blue and the yellow

in their dipping flight 
away down the slope of green
hillside toward a wall

of sumac. They spoke only 
of the blue and the yellow, 
and he wonders now what happened

to the third, the grayish-brown 
that he can't recall 
having seen fly away.