Lanius ludovicianus
Loggerhead shrike
Janet Ruth
Clad in somber shades
of sooty gray, ancient lava black,
ashy white beneath,
she perches taut—
a nocked arrow—
drawn and ready—
atop the mesquite.
Dark eyes peer
from coal-black mask,
seek another condemned soul to harvest—
grasshopper, lizard,
sparrow, mouse—
glossy ebony beak
with hook and tomial teeth—
executioner’s ax, honed
at the base
of an unwary
victim’s skull.
Beneath her feet.
Last summer’s nest—
constructed with her mate,
jumbled cup of sticks and bark strips
lined with grasses and scavenged fur,
in which she’d incubated
five pale, dark-blotched eggs.
Beneath her gaze.
A larder, a cache,
her curiosity cabinet of comestibles—
fence lizard impaled
on mesquite spine,
the brilliant blue of its belly
fading, skin dried stiff,
on rapier tips
of New Mexico agave,
crispy black and yellow remains
of a horse lubber grasshopper—
all stabbed and stored,
a pantry for later
times of wintry want.
A movement in the grass.
Let fly by instinct from her perch—
an arrow loosed
in undulating flight,
propelled through an ocean of desert air
with rapid bursts of wingbeat,
an iron shaft fletched
with ebony feathers.
She hovers a moment
just above the grass,
drops beyond sight
in flurry of wings
and flash of beak.
in her beak she bears
a twist of feathers
that the instant before
was a grasshopper sparrow,
wings her way to tight-strung strand
of barbed wire, impales sparrow
on unnatural, rusty spines.
With a cry—harsh and joyous,
raucous and wild—she launches back
into the frosty winter air
above her sere realm
of sun-cured black grama grass
in shades of silver-gray,
quaking subjects,
and spiny temples.
Both songbird and apex predator—
her ancestors
have ruled here
since the late Pleistocene—
a thornbird dynasty.
~~~~~
Janet Ruth is a retired NM research ornithologist, whose writing focuses on connections to the natural world. Her first book, Feathered Dreams: celebrating birds in poems, stories & images (Mercury HeartLink, 2018) was a Finalist for the 2018 NM/AZ Book Awards. See her on the web here.