When we added a deck
and more windows our
little dark cabin turned
into a treehouse where
the children inside us
are never alone.
Today the wind is so wild
branches wave their
loud warnings and
an unmoored unmanned
motorboat twists, lost among
whitecaps on the pond.
At the feeder, Karl Marx
and his life partner
Rosa Luxembourg -- I think of them
as my cardinals but of course ownership
is an idea they’d staunchly reject --
take patient, generous turns with
the nuthatches, titmice, and
jays. That poor bluejay.
His weight on the bar snaps
the “order here” window shut
like a trap. He waits
not understanding this seed’s
not for him. Nothing against blue jays
or squirrels or even raccoons but
black-oiled sunflower hearts are
not cheap. You know?
The goldfinches will soon
blaze forth their gender when
warmth and desire makes
only the males burst into flame.
My baby birds are all flown but
these grandfather giants who
introduced me to Karl Marx
and Rosa still burst
into new life each Spring
a cacophony of blossoms and bold
crop of cherries on which
waxwings will feast. And I’ll funnel
boiled sugar water into
a tube, which will bring back,
I hope, the hummingbird
whom I call Buzz.
If the rapscallion raccoon who
broke two good feeders
last summer while stealing
the seed appears once again
I will feed him some
rice cakes and coo at his
wee greedy hands that are
so much like ours. If he
can’t make it, that’s okay, too.
I’ll just doze in the sun in
my Mother’s Day chair,
unmasked, a lot like last year,
when the story I’m writing
about summer and why to
save trees
was just a stroke in my notebook
a seed in my heart.
