The bird— not five feet away— regards us(, not without fidgeting). Its settling is unsettling: tangerine belly, gray wings furled. A precise peak over which it knows the world. What is it? when did I cease to know? litanies of ignorance accelerate with the early summer heat like our hands dampening and I let go (look away as I swipe the hand on my shorts; then you swipe; my watch has slow knowing hands.) It is and isn’t stopping, pivoting, hopped-up on bird-speed. What does it want? What species of city thing am I? Behind it, the recumbent hill knows itself from itself. Did you mean this could go on forever in a good way? I am still or was never a robin-watcher, a wannabe. It cocks its head. Or an oriole, you say, another yellow feathered thing. It has always been or isn’t hopeless. I hung my fingers loose, a hedged bet. It looks unperturbed by our dearth of ornithological knowledge. The present stands still. No one cared how the watch held its hands as we walked up the hill.