grown, they aren’t picky with food but hoard
scattered caches carefully. the sown ground.
plus tuck bills beneath feathers for later
roosting, though my tree was lonely. and yours.
that scavenged pocket watch keeping
calendars tidy, unturned. disturbed eggs
cross-country too many miles to defend
too often irreconcilable predations.
y madrone currently lives and works in Chicago, IL via Olympia, WA via Detroit, MI via Baku, Ahzerbaijan. Other work can be found or is forthcoming in The National Poetry Review, RHINO, American Letters & Commentary, Columbia Poetry Review, Cloudbank & So to Speak.