In a book long out of print we learn of a jay
(see Finch’s Rare Birds of Southeastern PA).
Not the rare Crested Jay, with its flat-fronted crest,
nor the nursery-rhyme Blue, common burglar of nests,
nor yet the agile Scrub, but simply “Jay.”
Now, beyond the remotes of the farthest Khyber,
in a truer, bluer, undiscovered sky, where
“Pluckmill’s Magpie” and duck-billed platypi
for vistas envisioned by Seuss and Potter vie
(twined, sun-helixed as they are: locale and logic,
home and idea, topos and topic),
somewhere across the bar, first and last of a breed,
he arrives, wing to wing, not to rest but to feed,
free to flutter and whirl among dodos.
Free, free at last, to pursue his blue-tinged topos.