Les oiseaux étrangers 

They say
and who are they
the wise who know so much about us?
that where you live at eight years
is always home.

Maybe that is true for more
than me: my home moored
to an unfixed object
floating through the years
tethered only to my leaving.

There were birds I looked up
no birds I knew only les oiseaux etrangers
Alien birds, I’m sure my grandmother
would call them. But mallards?
Wigeons? Pheasant & partridge? Foreign??

But then: what about a river lapwing
drinking from the Mekong?
Trogons and bee-eaters, barbets
pittas and thornbills, ioras
that masquerade as goldfinches.

My home plotlines blur like reflections.
I float above the villas, slum apartments
like that unmoored childhood. I have no
tether either. Here between these wild crags
I might be bird, etranger. Flying somewhere home.