Reverse Bird Watching
David Stephenson

​​​You can see my house from the highway
but you can’t get to it, since it sits
behind a clump of trees, across a ditch.
So cars and trucks whiz past me all day long
and all I get from them is noise and stench—

until I gathered up some brush and sticks
and piled them up in one of the back trees
like a giant nest, and topped it with
a plastic eagle from the garden store—
where nobody could say what it was for—

and people started stopping by the road,
and word soon spread, which has attracted more,
a steady stream of lookers and parked cars,
taking pictures, even video.
I’m hoping a tour bus will show up soon.

And while they watch the eagle, I watch them
through my second-hand binoculars,
noting all the types and subspecies,
admiring their plumage and footwork.
I only wish that I could hear their songs.​

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​David’s notes: “This poem is based on a story I heard in a bar. One of my former coworkers was a machinist who lived across the river from Detroit, in Windsor, Canada. He was always embroiled in a bunch of schemes and had a million stories, both his own and second-hand ones from his brother, who was a limo driver. This is exactly the kind of guy you want to have a beer with. One time when we were out after work, he told this story about his friend who had put up a fake eagle’s nest on his property, and had people stopping by the road to look at it and take pictures. The story seemed a little far-fetched, but I wanted it to be true, and was intrigued enough by it to write this poem.

 

“‘Reverse Bird Watching’ originally appeared in the now defunct Avatar Review, and is in my collection Wall of Sound.“

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David Stephenson is a retired manufacturing engineer from Detroit, and the editor of Pulsebeat Poetry Journal.

 

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