Nest from above//Nest from below

by Erin Robertson

from hummingbird-height

I’d been weaving webs together
respinning silk in small circles
packing cottonwood down 
into a soft round cup
for most of the morning before they came:
noisy, boisterous, cracking the calm -
the who-mens - two small ones
wearing caps with their own broad bills

I’d no time to watch their wrestling
zipped in and out
with light loads
darning my knit nest
with a needle of beak
beyond the reach of their
wooden swords and endless tussle

but, it couldn’t be helped -
my emerald sheen flashed too bright
through fir branch -
they knew me at once -
their faces grew holes
and sucked air in

from the ground

despite their eager pointing
I couldn’t see til liftoff
when her body uncoupled from tree,
became bird
buzzed across blue like broken green glass

my eyes, distracted by her spark,
had to search the limbs again
finally found the slumped-open bowl
she’d been busily turning
on a flimsy branch right over sidewalk
likely a lesson in loss

days later we held a phone high
when she was off at the feeder
found a single white egg
a Jordan almond in a jeweler’s plush box
then two, long axes aligned, 
neat as a pin

one day she landed on the lip
tiny feet tottering on the nest’s edge
and we knew another soul had arrived

but it wasn’t like we thought:
big bruise-purple bumps
on translucent pink skin
no down at all

no elegance about it
it was the naked need of the just-arrived
helpless and vulnerable
but still asking for love

how could this small alien thing
so fragile and awkward
survive in a world of nos?
but she did.  as did her twin - 
two small, improbable yeses
weathering even the hardest hail

oh, the anticipation 
as the oldest beat her wings in the nest
building strength
trying freedom
ready to launch
into a lifetime of thousand-mile journeys
almost weightless with hope

 

from Dawn Songs:  A Birdwatcher's Field Guide to the Poetics of Migration, edited by Jamie K. Reaser and J. Drew Lanham, 2023