Robins' Alarum

From a distance the repeated shrill
musical note impinges the atmosphere.
A song unfinished but obviously emitted
familiarly from a robin's throat. Might
it be, as is so often done, inviting rain
to release us all, albeit temporarily,
from this cloistered, cloying heatwave?

The distance is breached as we move
steadily forward on the forest trail,
our boots crushing fallen pine cones
sticky with sap. There is a detectable
note of shrill hysteria now in the
reiterated call and we strain our eyes
toward the canopy of leafy green.

Ah, there they are, a pair of gaudy
breasted robins indeed, and frantically
winging it from branch to branch in
some unseemly, un-robin display of
alarum. Become explicable, yet unusual,
when we raise eyes to a bare limb.

Where sits the large, dark, hunched
figure of an imperturbable barred owl,
who, sufficiently irritated, is not beyond
exercising its raptor's prerogative to
silence his fear-addled tormentors.