Flight
Nut brown sparrow, my operatic companion.
No sound from my poem, just her
three quick notes and a jumble of trills.
Warm April in the Peninsula suburb,
language in my hand. Stir of time,
branching a new way to write. I hear
her insistence. Silence is suspended
again. I walk closer in the cut grass
and ask her pardon for my intrusion.
Fledglings emerge from the birdhouse,
perch on the edge of the rim, falter, fall
away from the rail to damp earth.
She sings to them from her perch.
Her sound rides spring exhalations
from new leafed oaks and lilacs.
I hope for the third try and their wings lift,
song-filled and with new memory
of flight under wind-streaked feathers.
Published in Birdland Journal January 2020