Phoebes

A nest in the eaves of my new house:  one  
female and three chicks, desperate pleas  
erupting for food. The mother never  
sleeps in, is never paralyzed  
by sadness.  Industrious, she wheels  
past, stopping to hover at intervals  
like a bee, her gadgetry swirling,  
 
Italianate.  This morning on the cement,  
I found a crumpled body; a raw, discarded  
piece of meat—a fallen chick—maybe  
pushed out, weak or diseased.  These wounds  
don’t ever seem to heal, I thought, and why  
is courage always my last trick?  I placed  
the broken dainty to sleep in a forest cradle  
 
of bark and fern, and this afternoon  
more tears came, more tears I don’t need  
to waste over a collapsed marriage’s  
somber monument.  I lay down to listen  
to the whistle and squeak of the siblings  
in their basket, to the mother’s fast flutter,  
her logistical maneuvering, her work.  
 
 
 
*Note: This poem also appears in Message in a Bottle Poetry Magazine (scroll way down):  
http://www.messageinabottlepoetrymagazine.com/issue-7.php