Poser

Not quite the likely place to meet him where In fast-foods parking lot mere people gather. Looking up his beak at me (offbeat Customer that he is cape flung back To show its scarlet lining) with beady eyes He scans the joint to catch unfinished burgers Tossed to blacktop where he swoops blackbird Superior uttering dark threats or bubbling Scraps of song and cautiously consuming In shoddy noon as lunchtime traffic looms. I drive away. I feel I'm caught between A threatened innocence and the chill Of culture shock. I ask What's for sale? Nature or artifice -- which tells the tale?