On Saving a Fledge

for Phoebe's birthday

Here’s a preamble to the poem. I walked out into our sunroom this morning of Phoebe’s birthday to find a frantic fledgling battering itself from window to window as cats leapt and leapt to catch. They did catch it but did no harm at all as I pried open the jaws and cupped the fledge in my hand. I calmed its racing heart and then I realized it was a phoebe, realer than real.

On Saving a Fledge

Phoebe’s birthday:

celebrate!

celebrate!

Her advice to us all?

Dip out a cup

of your own self

and sip it up.

On her birthday

I taste

the pastel warmth

of a sunrise

near the ides of April.

Her truth suffuses:

We did not save her,

she saved herself

from a cat’s maw.

With maybe just

a bit of help

we can learn

to be realer than real,

too.