(A Sportsman's Notebook)

Walking down Minetown
I surprised the covey of quail
you kindly braked for last spring--

grown some since! it starts
as a scare almost--boom--low low note
somewhere inside the startled flapping

a blossom in the thorax
a mirror-ball flash of upturned leaves,
no time for even a decent recount,

less than ten, more than four
but quail for sure, that short take off leap
and then low bottle neck cormorant

underwater plunge about a foot up
from the tangled thirty degree slope then gone
but however fast its the sonic boom

that arrives just after you do,
and anyone can learn to do that--
like that Aussie woman on the newschannel

you can dehumdify
the room until it matches
you preferred level of discourse--

the earnest western tweet
swept beneath laquered feedback
with a smooth adjustment of the wrist,

the windows thrown open
onto a clean clear drink of water
forever and forever and forever.