Merie Kirby
What small birds do
Once I held in my hand a yellow finch –
It hopped through the front yard, escaped or
turned out pet. It trembled to vibration
against my palm, strong heartbeat I took for frailty.
My grandma loved the little birds, thought them
more deserving of the feeder’s seeds, bullied by blue jays
and cold winds. Divorced young, with four daughters,
did she see herself in feathers puffed against winter?
A Western bluebird, tattoo memorial, rides
my shoulder, gripping a flowering branch, head
turned, eye alert, beak about to open in his cheer-che-cheer call.
A friend to gardeners everywhere, one web site describes.
When my cousin and I were toddlers,
Grandma planted us a garden in her side yard.
A small meadow of violets and alyssum,
Purple and white carpet that we stepped on eagerly.
When we crouched down and began to pull up flowers,
our mothers rushed to stop us. It’s their garden,
Grandma insisted. Whatever they do is fine.
Her garden always a master class in color and texture:
ferns and roses, lemon tree and bird of paradise,
camellias and begonias, cypress and pepper tree.
She gave me a stretch of flowerbed for my own first garden:
nasturtiums and delphinium, cosmos and alyssum,
flowers that still mean refuge when the world turns
cold. I still sometimes must make my own warmth,
feel my heart beat wildly against the unfamiliar, listen
for my bluebird to sing cheer-che-cheer.
Merie Kirby grew up in California and now lives in North Dakota. She teaches at the University of North Dakota. She is the author of two chapbooks, The Dog Runs On and The Thumbelina Poems. Her poems have been published in Mom Egg Review, Whale Road Review, SWWIM, FERAL, Strange Horizons, and other journals. You can find her online at www.meriekirby.com.