We laugh a flutter of Chickadee chitter at the joke

of the gangly-limbed creature trying so hard

to fly away from earth, swooping upward

toward our branch perch in the towering oak,

straining forward until she slows like smoke

sucked backward, like a stretched bungee cord’s

retraction, falling like a wounded bird

toward the ground and up the opposite slope,

only to return, and this time slightly higher,

just to fall back harder. How her skying

hair swirls gold lash in the sun-lush wind,

her pendulum swelling with a laughter trill brighter

than ours, as if to say that better than flying

away is the joy of coming home again.