Lowering binoculars, I look down
at my Audubon field guide and confirm
the sighting—a golden-crowned kinglet
high in a shaggy Norway spruce.
Gazing again through the lenses,
I imagine John James Audubon peering
along the site of his Long Tom rifle.
Silencing birds with bullets,
he made them immortal in luminous
brushstrokes, posing them so lifelike
with wires they seem to dance,
colors so vivid the images sing
loudly in whistles, trills, liquid
warbles, and harsh corvid cries.
Brand name for protecting birds,
mammals, reptiles and fish, swamps,
grasslands and mountainsides,
he taught us to see a wonderstruck
utility in beauty and forget the blood-
stained paints, the killing that saved,
enabling us to repent in his name.
Audubon, painted by John Syme, 1826
