Nest
It looked like a hairball caught
in the hanging plant, the one we meant
to toss as it was dying or dead already
in late October, leaving us a chill,
but you stopped, noticing the rise and fall
of fur? It’s breathing, you said. Now we can’t …
No we can’t, I agreed. How long will it stay?
I was a spider in the center of its web: knots of waiting.
You were sweeping the porch clear of brown leaves,
pine needles, double-winged samaras from the maple tree.
I’d check on it daily, observing
that by the time I woke, still dark, it was gone —
but by nightfall, returned, a new ritual added
to our mostly dependable evenings:
warm the bottle, pee one pink line on a paper strip
means not a baby, give a bath, brush her teeth,
read a book, sing a song, and then, only after we laid
our daughter down, I’d watch from the window its slow pulse:
the white spots on its puffed-out body expand
and contract, bill tucked into its chest, body curled
in sleep not unlike hers when I rose those first few weeks
in the middle of the night to be certain she was still
breathing — strange and suddenly there, my hand
hovering over her, astonished, from the Latin extonare:
“to thunder, to leave someone shocked with wonder”
even after we’d shared a dwelling, my body for nine months.
And the bird, a Carolina Wren, would it survive winter?
Live its spring here and bear children, their tiny beaks
stretching ceaselessly for food? I realize how silly
this sounds, but I took a kind of pride
that the bird chose our home as refuge
from the wind and first frosts, the neighborhood cats
prowling suburban yards. And though I knew better,
I shouldn’t have gotten so close, my breath frosting the glass,
when I’m certain I surprised it, two heads perked up,
and after a moment, flew. Two, I’d never guessed two.
Will they return? I asked. You shrugged your shoulders,
placed your hand on my back. And this is so me of me
to hear you say not if it chooses to but if it chooses you.