I walk on the trail enough 
to know where the dead blue jay waits
and I still look away. 
 
Autumn muck doesn't stop my legs--
the canvas shoed impulse to walk
on water-- we settle for the rain slush
in the banana brown leaves-- melted
muffin skirts pressed thin as if
someone mistook them for rot-roses--
we aren't growing flowers in our forearms
-- it's not that type of rain anymore
-- it's time for boiled pirogues and tree scabs 
all  swaddled up in the gauze-mouthed wind 
-- nothing's hot but the skin we start to stuff
inside wool and wet canvas shoes yearning
for water-- gasping-open-mouthed bullfrogs
who have always eaten blue jays when we weren't
looking-- I forgot that animals eat
each other and don't worry about bones--
Only humans worry about severed blue jays
in the rain-- wonder if they felt death--
if death was something to feel-- if it was 
murky or sharp or wet-socked--
Bull frogs slowly turn into tulip bulbs
cold stone-legged seeds--I am windup bird-- 
molted blue jay without
the egg shell snapping-sky or a throat-- fragment winged 
and sputtering like a top-- flitter jitter
splintered toy that the wind sloshed
too boldly against the maples-- she was only
playing-- I didn't think about how
blue jays could fall-- they have wings
so they don't have to turn into angles when
they die-- birds don't die-- they don't
get eaten or snap or break-- I was
never bird boned because even though
my femurs hollowed out with age I never was
able to make them grow feathers-- we lose
our feathers anyway--
Drop them like pirogues in the center of the
wet gravel trail-- like rot roses for another
human to avert their eyes at death-- snaggle-winged
turning back into a scab to be peeled again--
step over me and don't look back--
Only humans think about road kill and
dead blue jays and what that means about 
how hard it is to die and how even chickadees
die quiet on the ground-- veiled in muffin
skirts and the gauze of the wind.