At The Feeder, Early November
       

At first it seems a mostly social situation,
the nuthatch clowning around upside down
on the post, a tufted titmouse
pretending to be somebody else,
looking, through the glass, like a mute cardinal
in that gray get up.

Hulls they litter to the breeze interminably,
I sweep. So I feed them bacon

raw, on a cracked "bird of paradise" plate,
its blue positioned so the wings are circling
its rim imperfect as memory,
Sunday breakfast,
nearly twelve. They are about as interested
as their painted mates and prove it
in perfect proportion to their plan:
If they feed us, we will come. We watch them as if
they were a religion we've invented.

Tomorrow is another day:

nothing to wake to but morning's dull-gray light;
Hickories hold their own in thirty-mile-per-hour gusts.

The birds have disappeared.
For the hell of it I keep watch, remembering
some days we did not need to eat.
Some days it was all we could do to be nowhere

among the soldiering trees.

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Copyright © 2021 Jane Ann Fuller All rights reserved
from Half-Life
Sheila-Na-Gig Editions
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission