Morning Mitzvah

I don’t mind
pushing the night bugs
from the surface
of the water

It’s the price
to be paid
for choosing to swim
at 5:45 a.m.

I’m the first
to greet them
where their lives
ended
while I slept

I ignore
that the experience
is less than
perfect

I’m a Hollywood starlet
in the 1940s
with a private pool
trimmed
with blue and orange
mosaic tiles

I make my own waves
while choreographing
Esther Williams solos
mixed with exercises
I found online

When looking up today
I see a being
peering at me

It’s one
of those tired
worn looking
black grackles

From the time
I arrived
in Arizona
I noticed them
looking more haggard
than midwestern birds

The desert heat
must get to them
too
I figured

Well this one
was watching
my water ballets
not for aesthetic
purposes

but
because the waves
I made
got him closer
to the bugs
he wanted to eat
from his post
on the edge of the pool

but not close enough

So I made bigger waves
and bigger waves
and the grackle waited
for the ebb and flow

and from the peak
of a wave
grabbed
a large dead moth
in his beak
and flew off

And I felt good
all day

The image is from the George Arents Collection, The New York Public Library: Chrysiridia madagascariensis.