Milkweed globes forming—
I could break into cartwheels
under the June sky.

Bluebirds guard their house,
picturing featherless beaks
needing to be fed.

Skies over beehives,
warm friends keep forty thousand
tucked in goldenrod.

Remember the words,
remember the poets well,
the attempt, at least.

Stormy July sky,
we see it coming all day,
waiting with sparrows.

If this was my barn,
I would paint in it all day,
life, coming and going.

Goldfinches lit up,
changing color as I walk,
their song is yellow.

Remember that day,
it wasn’t so long ago,
when all was not lost.

The first of April,
he’s been waiting all winter,
this Robin, singing.

The lives of finches,
whole bodies in the blue sky,
unafraid of heights.

March snow is hardest,
I clear a place for the doves,
we all wait it out.

What it must be like
to have wings with red shoulders,
the sky as your home.

My heart on my sleeve,
there’s no other place for it,
in this long, bare life.

Birds in midwinter,
singing in spite of themselves
stunned by the blue sky.

At the tops of trees
the seed eaters leap and munch,
nests lined with cattails.