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.