Each morning at breakfast
you amble up from the beach,
an apparition on stilts
with grapefruit-pink, three pronged toes,
pausing at the patio screen where we now sit
eating honeydew melon and toast.
Still as a statue, you stare
at our strange ways: our dependence on chairs,
our serrated spoons, our attention
to weather on NBC news.
With your spearing sword of a beak,
your showy, snowy feathers
combed over your plump body,
you stand proud at the screen door.
Stately wood stork,
not able to sing or to speak,
are you jealous
of the black masked cardinal, trilling his song
high in the ruby flowered bottle brush tree?
Will you turn to notice the fireball sun
licking the palm trees
on the far side of the lake?
