Kill, Dear

I only know a few things
with certainty.
For one thing,
God tries to teach us through birds.

Here is a tree root, sleeping in a circle,
encircling a fierce,
winged-creature of the fifth day,
she who curves her body into a plume
of ready sacrifice. No lamb is given,
only the startled halt of my progeny.

You may reach for her long-awaited,
but she would try to kill a deer:
Beware her haughtily-ringed neck,
bearing herself with no less ferocity
than the Kayan Lahwi women
in grandfather's National Geographics.

In Indiana in the 90s, she was there, crouched in gravel screaming at the clumsy feet of children accustomed to
corn fields and muddy lakes. 
She took me for a threat,
recognized me as a substantive being crowned equally with the power
to destroy and

to turn away.

Again, she's here, in Arkansas twenty years later, bearing her
perfectly-ringed neck and exposing
pillowy down in a hovering, rocking,
hissing plea for her labor to be
unwasted.
She faces my ambling offspring
while hers yet slumber.

A bird looks you in the eye
and you both know whom He fashioned
first. She is of the ground
and I am of the man
who named her.

She knows the serpent, too,
and she also must lay her future
carefully, prayerfully,
where the slithering fury fumbles.

Here is the earth holding
the feet of my children who peer
at the speckled heft of life
left vulnerable, exposed to plunder,
Sheltered fearlessly by killdeer killdeer killdeer

My curly-headed son repeats her indignant cry
breathlessly and in earnest
Killdeer killdeer killdeer

Other than this parroting,
their only reaction is awe,
trembling curiosity,
a hushed respect,

and then they turn away.

She shrieks after us once more,
victorious, perhaps thankful,
Killdeer killdeer killdeer