While East Coast air
still clung to our clothes,
we strung up the suet
so it swung
gently above
our new balcony.
And with each morning
came a wonderful display
of feathers, flight,
and singing.
Fresh light backed
the swinging birds
from chickadees
to woodpeckers.
Their colors-
ink blot caps,
fire skulls,
rosy wings,
and orioles-
splattered with
soft white
snowfall.
They all
enraptured us
for months and months—
wooed us through
the rayless winter.
This magic at dawn
became the norm—
a spell cast
without falter.
And I, foolishly,
took this gift
the world
had offered
as a codified
law of life,
that occurred after
unfamiliar dark
spat back
foreign pines.
But then,
in the black bars
of shadow stretch
we began to glance
scurrying, silent,
furry forms
and heard
their clawed paws
scritch-scratch-scritch
our balcony’s
wood boards.
When the fresh light came,
our magic display
refused
to unfold—
despite the birds’
wonderful show,
all I could picture
was soundless slumps
and matted blurs
burrowing like
teethy worms
and festering,
nesting near
the fallen seeds
and gorging on magic
before morning.
So we swept up
cracked sunflower shells,
vacuumed crumbs,
and unstrung
the swaying suet—
magic reclaimed
by heedless
invaders
before we
knew it.
pm poetry 