My favorite songbird
is not the Nightingale
but the Loggerhead Shrike,
gray and white
with its thick little body
and blocky head,
it sits ready to strike
and low to the ground,
famous for impaling frogs
and other small creatures
on the barbed wire fence—
I sometimes find the poor things,
dried out and crusty
like morbid lollipops,
and I know the Shrike is nearby
waiting to return
or admiring his conquest
from the cedars,
singing his triumphant song.