Birdland
Carol Mangis

 In a town that perches like a goat
on a cliff over the Hudson
walking a well-traveled street,
you’ll pass a giant tangle of wiry weed,
brown now, prebloom
but impenetrable still, and sound
rises from the snarl, a cacophony
of chirps, louder than belief.

You might sight a wing
a tail, a beak;
nothing more.

Humming rustle, rustling buzz,
tweeting squawks, silver sounds.

Did a new species arise
to build this nest
big enough for bird-size men—
a thorny tangled town, hive of wing and beak?

Inside, an avian feast: bug and slug;
birds toast with puddle water
drunk from cat-skull cups,
peck, scratch, and sing,
smooth feathers into beds and walls,
weave clothesline, cable, piano string
into the thin, tight walls.

Safe and tight—no cat would dare
enter the environs of birdland.
She’d never be seen again.
Woven into the tangle,
you’d see orange fur, a whisker, a claw;
nothing more.

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