The Scrub Jay in the Juniper

A western scrub jay sits in the juniper,
the blue scarf down his back the same color as its berries,
and he sits and watches his cousins, the crows,
fly overhead against the city sky, caught up in dust,
and he hears the empty click of a truck, somewhere off in the distance,
and the heavy silence woven between the houses, the apartments, the parked cars, the sidewalk corners,
and he tilts his head toward my apartment’s windows,
and he looks straight at me, to where I sit alone, through the glass, and he stares at me, his black eyes calm as the clouds overhead, the ones tinged with the darkness of fall, the ones fringed with early orange sunset, and we both watch each other, just for a short moment, until he flies off, and I settle into the night’s solitude.