The Profiles of Birds

High growth and thick foliage
in an enclosure opposite our garden
invited the golden orioles to stay on;
often they perch on a bo tree or an old banyan
sometimes chasing the irritant house crows
sometimes coming close to us for a short stay
soon to fly away.
As the summer through rains was evaporating
I found them often absenting;
the idea that they might have migrated
gave birth to a feeling of remorse
for not snapping them during their course.

Bright golden-yellow with sharp black patches
preening and pruning with beak
gnawed at my heart, incited me to seek
and catch them to keep in memory digital.

And then suddenly- peu peu peu-
the call reverberated in the air;
if not all, it must have reached a few.

Ready with camera held in two hands
as I stood below the drum-stick tree
they were spreading wings, preening and pruning
unafraid and free;
seeing me close by, posing the instrument to catch
they began love making, two of them dancing
jovially, jumping from branch to branch;
it seemed entirely unusual and rare
for them to so behave with me so near.

I began clicking to catch and imprison the beauties
forgetting that the Sun was at its youth-
standing before me; a morning sooth
like a real cul-de-sac.
I caught, alas, the shadows of the birds,
profiles surrounded by twisting branches and dark leaves,
colourless facades.
Though in my heart I have kept their images and song
the idea to imprison them was perhaps wrong.
I strongly feel that all this has been
with the intervention of a presence unseen
for things evanescent in any sense
are to be realized only in essence.