Sparrow
       

       It was her moment,
       but I took it for my own.
       Through the storm window
       I felt the pressing cold.
       And she was at the feeder
       warmed alone
       by the fall and rise 
       of her brown-plumed breast.

       Approached, 
       she turned her eye, 
       but did not have the strength or fear
       to lift her wings.
       I heaped seeds around
       her clutching feet. Absurdly, 
       you might think.
       But there was an appointment. In town.
       And so I left
       the world wavering in her tiny oval eye, 
       an eye the size 
       of a lone, husked seed.

       Who's to say how it ended that night?
       Clinging to that perch
       until the slightest wind toppled her. 
       Perhaps, one more flight,
       her wings astonished by the thickness of the sky.

       On my return
       I had to park the car,
       check the lights,
       fiddle with the door to the garage,
       before looking for the bird. 
       I found her in the snow.
       In my gloved hand I raised her up,
       her prescient eye still
       turned toward mine,
       her silent mouth
       singing to my bones.



       Next
       Contents
       Home page