Margaret remembering in summer how they’d fly
into her hand, black-capped, black-masked,
bobbing one birdseed at a time—I remember
in cold Amherst how they’d fill the lonely feeder
just outside the kitchen window, especially
when the ice mixed in with snow would slap
the double glass, shake it a little, and start to sing.
One wearies of the sublime, the great deep thing,
the red-tailed kiting hawk sliding down the sky
to make the kill, the sky itself changing on its own,
depth of feeling depth of field. Margaret sitting still,
pieces of the sun falling in the shadows all around her,
while my bright chickadees are braced against the wind,
feathers fluffed, each of them so small I could wrap one
in my fist to keep it warm, alive, then suddenly gone.
All winter in the snow depths just outside you live
in separations made of glass—I’d never have
the patience to hold out my hand and wait out
a bird, regardless of how beautiful the weather.
Stanley Plumly’s posthumous collection, Collected Poems, will be published in August 2025. This poem appears in the May 2025 print edition.
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