One fell out of the neighbors’ tree across the street,
landing on the ground below.
Sticks, a bit of fluff, and the long string of plastic
I had reached to throw away,
the kind that peels back to reveal the wet string cheese
mothers press into small red hands,
crumbed with dirt from front yard acrobatics,
interspersed with 25 cent visits to the lemonade stand
in the driveway next door.
It survived the winter,
the plastic flag reminding passing dog walkers
of the noisy, delight-verging-on-tears afternoons,
the faithful, stair-sitting mommas
peeling back the plastic and brushing off scraped knees,
staving off the witching hour,
when football tackles give way to bedtime routines,
Daylight Savings gives way to winter snows,
and moving men load trucks and drive south.
I left it,
no longer littering, but christening
the bare footworn, somersaulted, slip-and-slided,
homegrown patchwork bit
of mud and grass.
© Rie Harris, 2018
_male_carrying_nest_material_from_Coimbatore_district_JEG6839.jpg) |
| House sparrow male carrying nest material Photo by P Jeganathan on Wikimedia Commons |
