Mirabile Visu

(For the nomenclature committee)

Bird watchers band their joy

with cognomens

in the vanishing

humane world.

Appellations in dead cabinets

to page a scholarly approach

that Audubon first rendered

faithfully, albeit

with a bullet in his brush

(Dr. Gray's airborne

anatomy).

The bird, russet at dawn,

starved of name—

thrush or thrasher—

Sang the morning clear.

Song in a tiny bag

of skin and feather,

hollow-boned creature

to draft the firmament

against the field-drab weather—

his pipe and signature

a rubric flame.