99poems/tanager

A western tanager
in the bottle brush tree,
which he mistook for an oriole?
They stand out in the bottle brush
like an errant bloom,
as the tree’s flowers stand out
in the green scene they interrupt.
Life seems to like disruption,
or is it merely variety, and
I should change my interpretation
of the day’s events,
the events of a lifetime,
which seemed to change like
a train in a switching station,
so that I find myself headed
for Baltimore,
when I had set out for Peoria.

5/4/99