Fed by Birds in Winter

Caught on a stoop rail is a bundle-gift
of seeds and leaves

hand-woven into a grass basket by birds, a thank you,
I think, for years of lugging

seed to the feeders—millet, black-oil, sunflower, nyjer,
a little milo. They

are only guessing but the gesture is noted. Whole
corn, I’m told, is favored by wild

turkeys, ducks, and uncles, cracked corn by doves, quail,
and sparrows, peanuts

by a beer-gutted guy at the ball park. Macadamia
nuts are favored

by the Johnstons next door; the feedings, an operation
of waltz steps, lace and loops,

peaking upward, swooping numerically into a toe-shoed flederslap,
a straw bear at Wittlesea, a time spliced,

or rather, a surpliced choirboy as a pew carving, delicate
stallwork in tree

restaurants of peculiar design, one, like a bucketed apron skirt,
another like a pagoda. Then, a neighborhood dog

bawls at the day moon with outré animation scattering up
the wind

with his loud and yapping, sending our dinners pirouetting into
the sky’s frozen tears.

Fed By Birds first appeared in Scythe Literary Journal, Winter, 2010