Poems by Angie Minkin

Ode to Cedar Waxwings and Toyon Berries

by Angie Minkin

From Canary Summer 2021

Angie lives in the Visitacion Valley watershed in San Francisco on the edge of McLaren Park, where Monterey cedars grow tall and coast oaks stand unbending in summer winds. Yosemite Creek used to flow here, and she hikes the trails looking for tributaries and swallowtail butterflies.

Black-crested and yellow-dipped, you arrive
to show us how to feast fully. The being of you,
the life of you, too many to count,
you gray-silked, juice-addled gluttons.

You chatter and gorge on the toyon berries,
red and dripping from the tree that emerged
by magic—a city-sized beanstalk, a miracle
from a seed dropped, perhaps, by your ghost-mother.

Thick, bronze leaves shadow my backyard Buddha
as the fruit falls in his lap. He smiles at the neighbors
as they hack the branches hanging over the fence.
How they hate the stains stuck on their cement yard.

Don’t they know this native endures?

I hush, freeze—try to spy. You startle,
rise as one, your wings beating.
You settle on phone wires, until the cat sleeps,
the sun drifts, and you can’t resist the lure

of those siren seeds. You’ll carry the leathery pods,
release them in another garden in another time,
and another woman will wonder
where did that tree come from?

Branches stripped, you ascend, tiny scraps
of fog, quiet now in the wind’s hustle.
I climb on top of my Buddha’s shoulders,
check my back for sprouting feathers.

Dear waxwings—
If I stretch my arms high enough,
weave my hair with toyon berries,
will you spirit me away?