T.

I'm not very good at weekly blog assignments, but I'll try to keep up with the Tuesday Poem, because one thing I do love is community, and connecting with writers across the planet is an invigorating prospect. (Click here for a list of more participating poets.) So, here is this week's Tuesday Poem, on Wednesday:

Morning Obituary
--in memory of Margaret Hodge

And I walked outside into May blossoms
to a pair of nuthatches who for weeks
carried twigs to the red birdhouse.
A gust had shifted it, and without
thought I reached up to right it
and out startled a frantic flurry,
new wings barely aloft.

I found one under the back steps,
crawled belly-down through spider-spawn
only for it to scamper further into darkness.
Two more rested in a clay-pot,
a spent tulip grown through the drainage hole.
I tendered each feather-bundle
back to the nest.

Rummaged into brambles,
desperate to discover the last
beside the rusted bucket
and its remnants of apples.
It vanished in a weedy tangle.
I returned to my house, closed the cats inside,
sat down to write you this poem.

copyright 2010 T. Clear
originally appeared in Calyx: A Journal of Art and Literature by Women