The Bird Watchers (for Renée)

Little black eyes tremble nervously in the grass, always nervous, always trembling, always prey to the above – blinking – on a tall branch hooded eyes scan the ground, spot the vole, prey, predate, a tension in the claw and feather, to strike – blinking – beyond the camera, a falcon web cam, blue eyes barely catch the peregrine in flight, the beauty of nature’s butchery for the beholder, turn to their companions – blinking – did you catch that? No, we were watching the bald eagles, did she catch that mouse? It wasn’t a, let me play it again so you can see – blinking – eyeless, roving, the camera catches the bird watchers, zooms from street view to aerial, ascending geo-synchronous orbits (we know where you live) – blinking – all the data trapped by satellite, coalesced in a thousand retinaless, searching, sending, the visions of a lifetime in digital format – blinking – spiderbots serving the servers, into the empty iris of the IRS, FBI, tax companies, social networks, Google, empty neural tubes, crawling, webworks, who’s – blinking – watching – blinking – in a back room of the Audubon Society, attentions are measured like Big Brother or reality TV, to monitor which species no one might miss, the prey, the forgotten – blinking –