What Is a Grackle?

A comfort common to Southwest desert

parking lots, a familiar, a messenger,

an overlooked angel oiled by asphalt,

consolation of the casino, supermarket

spiritual guide picking at a free-today

hot dog, a dropped grape or lentil,

its purple-green head iridescent,

its long keel of a tail.

Black birds but not blackbirds

with their showy epaulettes blood-red

as a war field. Grackles glint

like lacquered ebony, the females brunhildas,

if by brunhilda you mean “brown-headed,”

not the German “ready for battle.” Blind

to centuries of borders, of battles, they waddle

stiff-legged at your feet, a janitorial sweep

to their tails, checking cart tires and light poles

for moths, beetles, singing their seven songs —

slides, whistles, wheezes, catcalls, chirps,

murmurs, clucks — to console you

for your losses: stolen cars, mortgage

payments spun to mist at a roulette table,

the beloved who breathed fire and scorched

your wedding clothes. Folly, wreckage,

they mutter, down among the packs

of backerboard and spackle. We’ve fallen