Robin Red-breast

They were utterly,
unquestionably not red: 
the pantry of English in the 1500s
a root-cellar with apples and roses
preserved in jars for the winter,
red the only thing available to name
this most plentiful of birds, an error
carried to North America to misname
an equally orange, unrelated bird.

In a time of plague, the robins’ vigor
seemed almost excessive, that spring
when they sprinted across streets emptied
of all except masked pedestrians
in the first bloom of COVID paranoia.

In our own cellar we had bedded
down for the season in rolls
of toilet paper, boxes of yeast,
everything in place for a year
or more of isolated plenty. 
But under the forsythia
and across the wormy yard,
the robins seemed to know everyone, 
side-eyeing jays and squirrels, freed
from the sudden death of cars and Roundup.

Each one had a faceted array
of rust and gray across its chest,
fluttering ten times for each breath
I held to molder inside my mask, 
if you could even call our breathing 
by the same name when robins fill
their air-sacs first, then their lungs,
oxygen flowing even through their bones
as they fly to chest-baring vantage points,
although they only sing from the ground.

[Photo credit: bryanpfeiffer.com]

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