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Comeuppance
Always when I'd observe White Admirals greedily swarm and cluster over still-warm clotted horsedung, my mind like the snob it pretends not to be would frame in mots its strong sense of the ironic and the alien. But one afternoon, crossing a valley between two ranges, I sighted a fledged family of Mountain Bluebirds, the males' backs and all their wings and tailfeathers flashing the exact incredible shading-into-turquoise hue of the sky just deepening toward autumn. Swift- or swallowlike they seemed caught up in a family frolic over a black pond in a pasture, earthen banks trodden all round to muck evidently by hoards of ponderous thick things with split hooves and casual habits. The pond had a floating cataract, and stank. And close then far above it seven sky-blue bluebirds swooped! banked! swooped! but never quite dabbled the surface of that standing water too dull to mirror the dyepot sky or themselves dipping up, deep in and out again; ah, even to me-and I've no patience with anthropomorphizing- it looked like play . . . much later I awoke to the long time I'd stood watching, and the lone blue thought flying in my head, envious, wordless.