Migratory

Slowly the lake fills with birds
tapdancing on the ice, ducking into
the melted pools, laying four toed footprints
across the mud. On the ground
they are hilarious squabblers, wings lifted
in indignation, beady eyes, the quick jerk
of heads. Seagulls, those cockney bastards,
are taking over the sandbar. The ducks complain.
The geese, magestic with a hundred years
of national pride, ignore it all.

They shit on everything. My car
escapes somehow, though the ground is
white with evidence. I clean a chair and sit
on the back deck, make their screaming congress
into human metaphors. Parliament, I call them,
and feathered stock market.
They go on shrieking, an endless
fascination, dotting the skin of the lake
far as the eye can see.