beauty’s other purpose

the male is beautiful, bright, cardinal red.
the crest of feathers over his head rise and fan,
calling a series of tink tink tink tink.
the crest relaxes and he surveys about him
and calls again.
he takes to the air, comes to another perch:
a little higher, a little closer, a little less at odds
with the fox squirrel’s semi-forward facing eyes.
the squirrel looks.

the cardinal calls another rapid-fire tink tink tink tink.
the squirrel looks back across the limb: green maple foliage, coarse flakes of bark:
there, a mound of dull, earthy colors.
the cardinal flutters its wings, calling.
this squirrel is out of character, a predator today.
the female cardinal is quiet, motionless; dull, earthy plumage — she is
lost in the nest. her tiny black-bead eyes searching:
answers, savior, sacrifice, luck — she waits.
the squirrel scrambles, the sound of bark against jagged claws, claws meant precisely for the
traversing of such surfaces. it is not the sound of a misstep.

the squirrel cares not for the male, but the male, nonetheless:
bright, beautiful, distracting, out of place seeming in a world comprised of
those who hide in fear of one another.
the female gone.
the male in flight, from perch to perch.
the female.
the female gone.
the male: bright, beautiful, distracting.
the squirrel leaves, but he has
eaten here before — 
unusual bio-chemistry.
the squirrel descends the trunk.
the female rises, the hidden protector;
only two tiny wide-mouthed birds; beaks hasping a wire-thin yellow and hunger-stricken below her.