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.