83

Eighty-three days
outside spring, she picks up

the bag of birdseed
larger than her back.

She’s defected
from the human thing,

family, friends, neighbors,
class reunion in the Milky Way.

She has so many children,
colors, speed, terrors.

Come close, she whispers
in her backyard. They do.

We don’t need to know
each other to create

meaning, to feel love.
The sounds in cold branches

where they perch and wait
feel more like her name

to her, than the one
the kindred strangers call.

The cold branches
that will gather snow

when she’s gone,
and the miracles

of dark peeping
things almost children,

bits of sky

their eyes,
are all the love

that’s fraught enough
to call home.