Sandhill Only in Name

The sand hill crane is an immaculate beast

I have not once seen on sand or hill,

Rather knee-deep in retention water

Steaming its belly feathers in foul vapor.

 

Offensively tall,

About the same height as a short man (that is to say myself),

A sand hill crane is often heard before seen.

Picture, if you would, a Cretaceous rainforest and imagine

The sounds you might hear from beneath its canopy.

A primordial utterance caught somewhere between

A whoop and a whistle and a spinning hand drum.

Something to strike a primate fear in my lizard brain.

 

I make the call back, of course.

After all, it’s a chilled morning and no one else

Dares brave the bike path near the swamp pond,

So, I may make any noise I please.

Who can stop me? The crane? (Perhaps.)

 

The imitation is a poor one, I possess not the throat of a dinosaur.

 

The dinosaur, however, looks up from its breakfast

Of lily pad seeds and tainted fish,

To perceive me.

Me! Ape!

And thus picture myself in its eyes.

 

Does it figure me on the hunt?

Does it know I’ve already eaten my morning bagel?

Does it know I haven’t showered yet? Why else would it be looking at me like that?

I’ll shower after the walk, crane, damn you, I have a logic to these things.

Does it know I’ll be tempted by a second bagel once I’m home?

My God! Does it know I’m a simpleton?

Does it know my secret, that the crane will always win?

That I wouldn’t fight back if,

For some reason,

It decided that the great meteor of the Yucatán was

Just a temporary reshuffling of the food chain?

 

I am now a scurrying thing in its eyes and growing smaller,

Burrowing now against the gravel of the bike path fruitlessly

Looking to escape the piercing gaze and the dreadnaught beak

And the mark of the rising sun on its forehead.

War paint! Paint of the hunt!

My last thought is of those goddamned bagels as I am gripped at the nape

By the true inheritor of the earth,

The endangered sandhill crane.

 

Its call breaks me from my reverie. I see it has found its partner.

They neck and coo.

“Come, meet the wife.”

I cannot, for am I ashamed.

My call, a poor imitation. I curse my monkey lineage.

I walk home, bipedally, not fly,

Eat my second bagel and wonder

If the crane will want to see me tomorrow.