Birds

Finches, yellow and green like early leaves, fly from one tree to the next making the branches live, then bare again. Winter's hawk, still hungry, floats above the fields, looking for anything moving. A bird I don't know sings in the walnut tree. He turns north and south, twists his small grey head to look around, hops a little down the branch and up again. They are all moving: geese going back to Canada, and the egret who visited our pond yesterday, a sort of spring tour, and returned to her lake, disdaining such a small estate. Now a plane flies low over the trees. Men and women are sitting in rows; someone may be looking down at me. I wave: you too, small plane, you too.