Toxostoma curvirostre
Curve-billed thrasher
Michael Rerick
Habitat Habitual
For Toxostoma curvirostre (curve-billed thrasher)
—Summer lens focus flashes taxonomy.
Took to the hook nervously fruit falls to a jet
feathered old man falcon fingered with a needle
yellow eye. Whose bill gets delayed in full cacti
deposits a nest egg and locked into shrubbery.
—Markings take to birder habits.
Liver speckled from a prickly hotel gray
and ant nosey for Gamble oak seed currency
droop eyes see long shots of another day
wet with insects taken on desert nights.
—Texts approximate elevation, not capture.
A head thresh spreads curled leaves and potluck
territory bakes everything neighborhood delicious
except bursts of six-foot flings leaving agape beaks.
A whit-whiter preens a tense territory in audio arcs.
—Arms and eyes wobble history.
Grimaces cooperate to mate a clutch in thorns
a change gently replacing the hard eating times
of unburied beetles. A twitch weaved thrasher
twig perch edges into logged jump evidence.
~~~~~
Michael Rerick is the author of In Ways Impossible to Fold (Marsh Hawk Press) and X-Ray (Flying Guillotine Press). Poems appear or are forthcoming in Coconut, Event, Greatcoat, Octopus Magazine, Psychic Meatloaf, and Slope. He lives and teaches in Tucson, AZ.