Cardinal Love

I host many song birds, but never enough. I steal them from neighbors with lavish tax-relief offers, free food and housing in exchange for their relocation and entertainment. I love them all but especially red cardinals, him with her. They hang and fly together. An integrity couple more than the robins and sparrows and bluejays and finches I have flinchingly noticed. I'm not so sure how mourning doves might compare with red rapturous cardinals, him flashy patriarchal and her graceful matriarchal sharing worms and seeds with a bilaterally grateful kiss. Sometimes, watching them carry on from tree to garden sea to nested night to be, I feel alone longing to belong mutually beloved, paired and not so autonomously impaired. Kissing oneself and my own past life investments in mistrust of goodbye without farewell is better than no healing kiss at all, yet falls awesomely short of cardinal couple celebration kisses.