Incessant with uncertainty, one blue jay

Herman Sutter

September 15, 2024

keeps picking up a peanut

and dropping it,

as if he can’t 

decide; as if 

he is testing them.

Each. Is this

the one. Is this?

It is

kind of funny

how he takes each

in his beak, turns it over 

then drops it

only to snatch another;

dropped, in turn,

because there is

a third.

This goes on and on 

until another jay appears. 

And suddenly the nut rejected 

becomes feathers 

flipping, flying wildly 

tipped against the emptiness 

of desire

incessant 

with uncertainty.

I knew 

a boy with wings like that;

crazy as a blue jay.

Herman Sutter (award-winning poet/playwright/essayist) is the author of Stations (Wiseblood Books), The World Before Grace (Wings Press), and “The Sorrowful Mystery of Racism,” St. Anthony Messenger. His work appears in The Perch (Yale University), The Ekphrastic Review, The Langdon Review, Touchstone, i.e., The Merton Journal, as well as: Texas Poetry Calendar (2021) & By the Light of a Neon Moon (Madville Press, 2019). His recent manuscript A Theology of Need was long-listed for the Sexton Prize.