You take the direct approach:
throw your one-ounce self
against the illusory mate—
your mirror image—
while all the while
sounding your best notes
most compelling cadences
to a silent
silvered
void.
      A coy retreat to a birch
yet you can’t resist a warble:
I’m here, I’m here!
    She vanishes.

Couldn’t you have your pick
in the woods?
woo from a perch
more assured?
why risk this precarious footing
to court the headstrong stranger
nesting in my driver’s side mirror?

     I finally drive off.
I can’t subject you to this—
for the sake
of a futile love,
for the sake
of a poem.

©

Susan G. Duncan is an independent consultant with a performing and visual arts clientele, capping a long career in arts administration. She served as executive director for San Francisco’s long-running Beach Blanket Babylon, the al fresco California Shakespeare Theater, and Grammy-winning ensemble Chanticleer.

Her poetry has appeared in Atlanta Review, Crack the Spine, Crooked Arrow Press, The London Reader, The MacGuffin, Soundings East and Yalobusha Review, among others, as well as in anthologies by Sixteen Rivers Press and Red Claw Press.