IN THE GLOAMING
when a tiny red-breasted bird hopped up to me.
Fearful of stepping on it, I froze.
And it promptly fell in love with my foot.
Was he seeking solidarity with my shoe? It was red.
Was he begging, did he want feeding?
I had nothing to offer. I stared down at it,
and the penny dropped, I realized
it was an Old World robin. Not a thrush,
not the large red-breasted American robin
that visits us each spring. I thought of how,
sometimes the renaming of things
fails us with false similes, not metaphors.
Impossibly tiny, it communed with my boot.
I wasn’t too sure what the attraction was about.
Needless to say, we stood a very long time
on the foot bridge, in the gloaming,
that robin and I, while the river carried on.
4/11/21
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