My father takes photos of birds for me now,

He sends them to me from wherever he is,

And the distance doesn’t feel so great.

Pyrrhuloxia, I tell him, when he captures its beauty on screen,

The dusty red bringing me close to the desert.

White pelicans, he tells me,

When he sends me another.

 

Tears sting my eyes,

Not in the doing, but the remembering,

The missing,

Running through fields, 

Chasing the haunting call of a snipe,

Trying to spot it as the light diminished.

Spending time finding ring-necked pheasants,

Teenaged quail and excited robin mothers,

Pointing, laughing at frigatebirds on the sandy beaches of Mexico.