The male has a red patch on the head
which is visible when he gets excited.
His fuzzy crest is a funny fright wig, a punker’s dyed red spikes—a bottlebrush blossom seen up close, through a bee’s eye. All day he flits madly outside my window, inflamed by a silk amaryllis on the sill— His beak is a graphite stylus tapping some frantic code for desire into the pane.
Susan Kelly DeWitt | Rodin’s The Kiss Contents | Mudlark No. 46 (2012)