Flurries of sparrows come and go, 
 alarmed by things invisible to us.
 Bold chickadees do not budge for humans.
 Big and little woodpeckers, sated with insects,
 look for seeds to cleanse their palates.
 Nutty nuthatch eats upside down.
 Tufted titmouse, on the ground.
 Purple finch has no purple.
 Yellow finch looks like an escaped canary.
 The redbirds wait till the riffraff are gone,
 and dine at a civilized hour. 
                               All day long,
 squirrels squabble with the birds, 
 like children with their siblings.
  
 But at night the scene goes
 full mammal. The teenagers arrive.
 First the coons, the rockstars 
 who trash the place, shake
 the feeder down and break it open.
 Then the skunk who digs up the ground. 
 Having different diets, they coexist
 like separate high-school cliques. 
 Last of all Blossom
 the Possum, nature’s little hoover, 
 cleans it all up for the next morning,
 like the school janitor after the prom.