Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Mynah

1

Forty feet in the air,

the stob of a flowering ohiʽa

bows under a mynah.

2

Mynahs, their wings black-&-white

black-&-white, strobe the soccer fields

scanning for the epileptics’ team bus.

3

A flock of seven ducks shares one mind. 

Seven mynahs pretend fourteen.

4

Every region has its rowdy –

mockingbird, magpie, or mynah

playboy, bully, or lout – 

ornamental gardens with broken statuary

may be granted more than one.

5

Downtown, I watch them rise with alarm

settle with hops & swaggers. At home 

nothing larger than ladybugs fly

aside from cardinals & pigs.

6

Unseen, the jungle whistles 

with honeycreeper, scrubland 

fosters nene. Then settlers come 

with talking mynahs, chili fed 

to etch their naturally slit tongues 

for finer articulation.

7

O ill-paid inspector

How does my apple evade you?

Will you be relieving a widow of her potpourri

while mynahs swoop through the air space

to nab the core from my hand?

8

I’m selling my air gun, bought years ago

but never used, the barrel now rusty.

Rod will pay $40 to shoot the hundreds of 

bandoliered mynahs looting his money crops – 

mangosteen, rambutan, lychee.

9

When mynahs stand in a downpour

it doesn’t mean they can’t fly or don’t care

it means they don’t feel it.

10

The gutter along the ocean side of our house

amplifies the morning fusillade

stepped off by mynahs.

11

She hears outside the window

a sporadic tapping.

Tapping back in Morse code

she begs the mynah’s forgiveness

promises lacquered boxes, nacreous collar studs

yards & yards of gold braid.

12

Ringed by contenders, one mynah spatchcocks

another, dip & peck, dip & peck. Which

yellow eye blisters red?

13

Mynahs are not like ocultos

in Argentina. They do not startle up at night

from ground nests or shriek from the branches of trees.

Mynahs dissolve two hours after sunset 

& reassemble eleven minutes before dawn.

— 12 February 2013