We're mostly couples of that age when people start
	to wonder what they've missed,
		and set out to find it evenings

at Adult School. Our teacher's slim, blonde, single,
	fine at snatching birdsong from air.
		Amazing, really,

not to mention younger, and I notice how men
	gaze at her, intense as Sharp-shinned hawks,
		and consider their life lists.

What's the harm? My husband and I met so many
	birds ago, when he came fresh
		from the Southern California orchard

bearing the exotic names of cherries  
	(Bings, Vans, Jubilees, Lamberts, 
		Tartarians, Black Republicans),

his childhood of droughts and floods
	rich in one way: His father paid him 
		to shoot those birds that ate the crop.  

In their taxonomy, the avian kingdom
	divided neatly into damned Cherry Eaters
		and birds allowed to live.

A Cherry Eater chirped, and he ran to the orchard. 
	He plugged thousands at a nickel apiece,
		bounty hunter, .22 slung

where now he hefts a spotting scope and aims 
	at nothing more than magnification.
		No wonder he impresses her, birding

by ear, until that day when he admits his crimes.
	She begins to list some species, faltering
		when she reaches her favorite — Not

 Western Tanagers?  He nods, my George Washington
	who couldn't tell a lie. My Audubon  
		who slaughtered anything it took 

to paint a more perfect feather. Audubon
	could be forgiven because of the beauty 
		he made visible, 

the way I see beauty in my husband's need 
	to tell a sometimes awkward truth.
		Our teacher, though,

responds with silence, and her eyes dart 
	to her feet, as if someone's dropped 
		a sack of a tiny corpses.