Grubbing

The jay’s up early, and attacks the lawn with something of that fervor and despair of one whose keys are not where they always are, checking the same spots over and again till something new or overlooked appears— an armored pillbug, or a husk of grain. He flits with it home, where his mate beds down, her stern tail feathers jutting from the nest like a spoon handle from a breakfast bowl. The quickest lover’s peck, and he’s paroled again to stalk the sodgrass, cockheaded, obsessed. He must get something from his selfless work— joy, or reprieve, or a satisfying sense of obligation dutifully dispensed. Unless, of course, he’s just a bird, with beaks— too many beaks—to fill, in no way possessed of traits or demons humans might devise, his dark not filled with could-have-beens and whys.