love poem, with birds
Love Poem, with Birds
by Barbara Kingsolver
They are your other flame. Your world
begins and ends with the dawn chorus,
a plaint of saw-whet owl, and in between,
the seven different neotropical warblers
you will see on your walk to the mailbox.
It takes a while. I know now not to worry.
Once I resented your wandering eye that
flew away mid-sentence, chasing any raft
of swallows. I knew, as we sat on the porch
unwinding the cares of our days, you were
listening to me through a fine mesh of oriole,
towhee, flycatcher. I said it was like kissing
through a screen door: You’re not all here.
But who could be more present than a man
with the patience of sycamores, showing me
the hummingbird’s nest you’ve spied so high
in a tree, my mortal eye can barely make out
the lichen-dabbed knot on an elbow of branch.
You will know the day her nestlings leave it.
The wonder is that such an eye, that lets not
even the smallest sparrow fall from notice,
beholds me also. That I might walk the currents
of our days with red and golden feathers
in my hair, my plain tongue laced with music.
That we, the birds and I, may be text and
illumination in your book of common prayer.
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