Kinglet
For fifteen minutes now I’ve been studying
the motions of a kinglet as it crazes
about a scrawny pecan tree in the back alley.
It starts and flits. It has no plan discernible
to me. No direction. Except maybe them all.
If it could split in two I think it would.
It points its beak no bigger than a tack
at the trunk, at one of the last
measled leaves, at a goitered branch, at
outer twigs knurled with hard buds.
I’ve no idea what, if anything, it eats.
The blue jays whack open whole pecans
with thick beaks to get the meat;
doves will stroll the driveways or curbsides
for the buffet of car-crushed acorns.
The kinglet thwarts my best binoculars:
a falling leaf mistaken for its fluttering.
Even when I can focus close enough
to glimpse its white, ironical to me,
spectacles, I can’t see what it sees.
And for a while, at least, I’ve forgotten
the other news this morning:
the president’s self-serving demand
that the courts declare his crimes no crime.
Here, it’s one-fifth of an ounce of kinglet
against the late-November onset of winter.
Whether I watch it or not, it remains
a small quick thing holding its own.
William Wenthe’s fifth book of poems, The Gentle Art (a phrase taken from the painter James McNeill Whistler), was published in August 2023 by LSU Press. Prior books include God’s Foolishness and Words Before Dawn, also from LSU Press.
Read more poetry by William Wenthe appearing in Terrain.org: two poems and one poem in seven parts.
Header photo of ruby-crowned kinglet by Jeff W. Jarrett, courtesy Shutterstock.
