Wildlife Management III

Without the manifest necessity of a paint-laden brush, the motion

traced by the painter's hand would mimic that moth's fragile

desperation against the glass as it seeks escape into the already

painted sunset.

It drops to the sill periodically the way the painter's

hand would drop to the palette.

Then it sputters back up erratically

and zigzags to indicate the horizontal nature of sunsets.

On the

other side of the glass, free to the air, a nighthawk enacts the same

erratic striving, up and up and down and sideways then up again

and falteringly up until it drops, wings folded, suicidally

earthward.

It spreads its wings just above the ground for the life-

saving aerialist's breathtaking swoop.

Air through feathers (they

call it drumming) hums like a wind harp or tissue paper on a comb.

The nighthawk flies like that, erratic as a bat, because that's how

moths fly, and that's what nighthawks eat and what they feed their

fledglings.

Nighthawks build no nests but lay their eggs on bare

ground.

Their camouflage is so perfect you can find them only by

accident.

If you are out walking and the mother flies up, pulling

that clichéd broken-wing trick, and you mark the spot she rose

from, you can find the eggs.

If you go back after they hatch, you can look

right at them and think they aren't there—just some small chunks

of wood.

So I'm watching this nighthawk and the moth on the

glass in their painterly struggles that mirror each other as the

sunset reclines, aloof.

This is the only moth I've seen this rainless

summer.

The only nighthawk too.

So I open the window and give

them both what they want.

Copyright Credit: James Galvin, "Wildlife Management III" from Everything We Always Knew Was True. Copyright © 2016 by James Galvin. Reprinted by permission of Copper Canyon Press, www.coppercanyonpress.org.

Source: Everything We Always Knew Was True (Copper Canyon Press, 2016)