Urbana — 1978 (to Jude)

Would I be watching these birds
so intently
if her sister’s dearest friend
hadn’t taken ornithology lab
forty years ago?

And what about that
bright streak of a blackburnian
that flitted into the rosy redbuds
right before my eyes
while walking home from class?

And would I have been
on the wrong side of that street,
but for my walking partner
(the professor of Chinese literature)
and that inscrutable old husky dog
who’d rest in the sun
in his front yard just down the way?

Sometimes he would even stand up
and stretch,
half acknowledging my smile.