When asked the date of their return in spring, google
provides baseball timetables. In a May snowstorm, a male
grasps the tine of the hummingbird feeder with prehistoric
feet. His wife, yellow-chested to his orange, builds her pouch
of a nest in a high tree, ejecting eggs of parasitic
cowbirds. In spring twenty years ago, the Orioles halfway
through a 14-year losing streak, my father left
his pancreas in Baltimore. It’s long incinerated, or its cells
are propagating their mutations in a basement lab. Until he finds
his wife, the male sings all day and past sundown.
