Jays

by David Solway (September 2015)

The jays hang in the huckleberry,

pillaging pink from the blossoms,

scarlet from the berries.

They shove aside the tiger swallowtail

sipping decorously from the tiny tumblers,

drive the bees from their petal-scented homeland,

take over the territory completely.

Even the robins with their red bibs

and prandial lilt and chatter

have made themselves scarce.

There would be silence

but for the jays busy at their intifada,

raucous and truculent

with their foraging appetite

for nectar and the smaller insects,

their leaf-battering wings

banishing butterfly and bee

to the lesser shrubs and bushes

in the margins of the garden,

and harrying the robins from the huckleberry

they once adorned,

sunny and aflutter in company,

with simplesong and apt similitude.

________________________
 

David Solway is a Canadian poet and essayist. His forthcoming volume of poetry, Installations, will be released this fall from Signal Editions. A partly autobiographical prose manifesto, Reflections on Music, Poetry and Politics, is slated for later this year with Ansthruther Press. A CD of his original songs, Blood Guitar and Other Tales, appeared last summer. Solway’s current projects include work on a second CD with his pianist wife Janice and writing for the major American political sites such as PJ Media, FrontPage Magazine, American Thinker and WorldNetDaily.  

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