After Making Love We Hear Birdsong
It’s been a pretty athletic performance,
if I do say so myself, and as we finish
I’m winded, just holding Jennifer close,
and about to start kissing the salt off her neck
when the birds pipe up at the window.
All night we left it open to the breeze—
more than warm already now at six am
this August Tuesday—and a motley flock
has gathered on the sill, just as pretty
as you please. There’s a blue jay thrusting
his hips and warbling what sounds like
“Lay Lady Lay,” and there’s a mockingbird
with a long, clear, hot-damn whistle,
a cardinal couple too, and three gold finches
bobbing and puffing out their chests
to whoop and coo. A pair of humming birds
leer in over the other guys’ shoulders,
not singing themselves of course, but flitting
back and forth with their long tongues out,
licking air in what is clearly vicarious pleasure.
It’s flattering—I won’t lie—this Disney treatment,
but just as I turn laughing, “can-you-believe-this?”
to Jennifer, I see our tender children
at the bedside with their big eyes glistening
in a soft “oh-my,” and when the five-year-old,
Josh, sees me see him there’s syrup
in his smile and he says, “Daddy, that was beautiful.
Momma, you are so, so beautiful, and Daddy,
when you threw Momma in the air
and spun her sideways I was scared,
but it wasn’t scary really, scary beautiful,
and I want to be like you when I grow up.”
Little Ellen goes, “Momma, you’re a pwincess,”
and then she does her darling arabesque—
you know, holding one leg up behind her,
tilting her head: from El that means pure respect.
Baby Phillip’s too little to talk or even crawl,
but he’s rolled in here somehow
and he’s on his back just giggling and cheesing
the way he does when he’s freshly nursed
and I tickle his soft round belly and sing.
You know, their support makes me think
maybe we’re doing something right as parents,
but still, it’s our children, so I reach back
to pull the sheet up over our nakedness,
and then there are our neighbors,
Bill and Sharon in the doorway
with these huge grins on their faces,
and Bill’s giving me the big thumbs up,
and Sharon, flushed, says, “Wow,
you guys, wow! Now that is it! That is sex!”
and there’s our mailman, Mike, behind them
on tiptoe and others too behind him,
some of them hooting, and one woman
calls out she was worried we’d snap
the headboard and then everyone’s laughing
and cheering and acting out their favorite parts
in slow motion right there in our upstairs hallway.
And Jennifer and I are laughing too now,
humbled by the generous applause,
but also proud and happy, finally, to be recognized
for this gift we always knew was special,
and then in a blitz the birds are swirling
through the room, landing on the dresser
and night table and the bookshelves:
snowy owls, and a cockatiel, and two swans
by the dirty clothes basket, knotting their necks
in a bow and fluting, and last, this peacock
that must weigh fifty pounds comes sailing in,
screeching a half-baked rapture that chills us all
as he fans his tail and quivers mightily.
And in the midst of this display Jennifer rises,
smiling that coy queen-of-the-moon smile of hers,
and she takes my hand and pulls me up
and we bow, and I don’t know if it’s sweat
and the shine of exertion or what, but our hair
and our loins and our eyes and our teeth
and everything, everything’s glowing.
“After Making Love We Hear Birdsong” first appeared in Southern Poetry Review, vol. 54, no. 2, 2016.