Untitled - Azam Abidov - poet and translator

or how twenty-three species all due to land
at 5:01 coordinate their simultaneous descents,
is beyond its scope. (What can’t be answered
often goes untouched.) A few of the sightings--
of cardinal, kingbird, red-headed woodpecker,
chimney swift, goldfinch, meadowlark--
are confirmed by someone’s light pencil mark.
Five out of six catalogued owls--great horned,
long-eared, barred, barn, and screech--
are residents who never leave. The short-eared owl
arrives at 10:10 (am? pm?), departs at 3:15.
The least bittern, the short-billed marsh wren
arrive together (4:10) and stay the summer,
while the lapland longspur and arctic towhee
winter over. Some birds--the shoveller,
the blue-winged teal--were seen leaving
but no one knows what time they came;
others, like the coot, duly checked in
(2:30) but managed to lift off undetected.
And you? Will your arrival, your crowning,
be clocked? A penciled note, a bracelet
of red thread twining your fledgling wrist?
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