A quail life

Paired quailing  
Marked Oreortyx pictus
Apostrophe’d plume  
From called “wet my lips”
Invitation
 
Black spot curling into the nest
Rising and falling  
Scaley feather’d chest
Ashen dot  
And cinder’d
 
Remember’d not lost for keeping
Oval’d strength  
Warm’d pale shell baby blues
To break and grow and coo
“Wet lipped” tunes
 
Come peckish March  
And in solidarity  
Grey suits line’d for forage
The seed swallowed  
Through neck arch  
And keen awareness
 
Sound panick’d  
Shot sudden scatter
Through the troupe  
Break’d family
Throughout the underbrush
 
But never permanent swaying
Nature calls  
Foreign to solo  
Blue jaying
They gather again
In apostrophe’d queue
 
Symbology thus
Lightening strike totem
Curly queue’d head
Ahead of the game  
Take the brass ring  
Momentum’d gold
And with whom ye gather
Do not unfold  
 
Point administer’d
With any purpose  
Forward and try, try again
(If at first you do not fricassee, fry fry a hen?)
With humble’d walk
To save your wings