The House Finch -- by Alex Ranieri

So still was I, sat on the deck chair, sunk in reverie, that no creature paid me notice. Birds of every description skittered hither and thither over a gentle breeze. I heard, on the other side of the wall, the scrabbling of little claws—over its ledge burst the fine scarlet head of a house finch. Surely this red is the most desirable shade—humans will crush thousands of cochineals in slavish and desperate pursuit of it, as though they meant to woo the color with lavish sacrifice. In this same way the Greeks meant to woo Zeus with the blood of a hundred prize oxen, and a man inflamed with love will fill the lap of his adored one with blood diamonds; but the color, much like Zeus or an indifferent woman, lavishes in turn its favors on one whom the world finds too lowly to observe.