There are Thirteen Ways to Look at a Blackbird

Sideways stranger and solitary dweller pauses at my knee
I don’t move either from my cliffside seat
Awareness, yes, I’m on the verge of acknowledgement,
Of an amorphous, achromatic avian
Apathy
Therein begets a sight
Shallow
Surficial, skin-deep, skeletal even,
Crown to throat, animated in tick-like pivots
Curves to breast then flank
The secondary and tertiary feathers fold stacked
Anatomy
How can bones measure in so few millimeters?
Can a skull so fragile hold anything other than feebleness?
Pity
Born from perceived inferiority
Closeness
Familiarity follows prolonged proximity
Fancy
And certainly the list must be short
Of others the bird has ventured so close to?
Mustn’t it?
Me
Imagined scenarios of an animal
Formulating an assessment of me
It feels drawn too
Bonded
A distaste between us–there can’t exist any
Maybe
There is
Why couldn’t it?
Why wouldn’t it?
Who am I to be so unenlightened?
My skull, not the blackbird’s, is vacant
I’m unable to communicate with its
Telepathy
So many messages brought
Pointless for my deaf sensibilities
Tragic
That there is no rewiring to make the language compatible
Here I’ll remain
Undone, untouched and unwise
He flees then flies
After his beak pinches a french fry
That’d been stuck to my thigh