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.
