It’s calm.
Too quiet.
My clear plastic bowl
serves as my bird feeder.
I don’t hear the distant
scratching, shuffling
of tiny sparrow feet,
the wing dances, fluttering, of a hungry
morning’s lack of big band sounds.
I walk tentatively to my patio window,
spy the balcony with detective eyes.
I witness three newly hatched
toddler sparrows, curved nails, mounted
deep, in their mother’s dead, decaying back.
Their childish beaks bent over elongated,
delicately, into golden chips, and dusted yellow corn.

Photo by Marc de St Pern