Plates from Audubon's Double Elephant Folio

Out of the sky like a bolt from an angry god,a red-shouldered hawk seizes a branchand turns to eye his mate on the fork above,concluding an urgent brief conspiracy.Audubon captured the swiveled head, the textureof tufted crown against the grain of his neck,four expansive talons on each yellow foot,each talon pointed and black as a fishing hook;around them—perfectly indifferent leavesand hanging moss braceleting a limb.The idea, not merely the shape, he thought,painting a striking gold around the nostrilhigh on each bird's rapier mandible—beneath them, perhaps, a salt-water marsh hen.

2

Here a common buzzard descends on a harestartled to find the beak an inch awayfrom his silky head and flushed with only oneimpulse—escape; yet, as he pivots to starethe bird in the face, the bank he's crouching oncrumbles into the sluggish river nearby,across which stands a pale blue house in haze,timber, cut and stacked—a logger's cabin?The backdrop looks forever at a removefrom the immediate subject of sauve qui peut,Audubon's theme, concomitant life and deathtrapped in a frame; his goal, exact ornithologybut something, too, of the bird's own characteramply infused with the artist's undying verve.

3

Ironic, yes: Audubon killed the birds he lovedto bring them to life in his art—shot,skewered, wired on a position board, vividuntil the colors drained out. He had twelve hoursor less to set their eternal likenesses down.The great white heron's multiple whites convergein a uniform shade with a few dirty feathers.His saffron vice-tight beak and pink tongueclamp a rose-yellow fish, whose marbly eyeis a tiny version of the stalking fisher's.Any resemblance eludes the predator,whose triumph dwarfs a pea-green bay in the Keys.Soon the heron will lift on outstretched wings.Only a random age-stain sears this page.

4

At last, a peaceful scene! Four spotted grouseare reveling together in the underbrushof bushes and serpentine vines; their camouflagesuggests they've found a protected resting place.The scarlet berries of the moonseed plantdrop like pendants before their luck-struck eyes,welcome assurance they can relax and feastfor hours there. Audubon described themas gallinaceous birds, like pheasant or quail.He painted them unassuming, edibly plump.His care with the curve of tail, tincture of beak,the attention to throat, scapular, and clawinstruct us about a salient feature of love:how its looks reside in the smallest detail.

5

Am I guilty of killing Audubon's artthat tracked elusive birds, some now extinct,by pinning down his prints into my poem?If so my trespass springs from a human need to say what quickens the mind and heartor thrills the eye: beauty should be recorded;ponder its source and how it was achieved:unforeseen, improbable, phoenixlike.Though Audubon died wealthy, his art affirmedby worldly success, he dreamed his large-scale workThe Birds of America at his lowest point, at his nadir,in midlife and bankrupt, confined in debtors' jail,where saving imagination summoned his willand from a window ledge in his cell took flight.