Sunday, July 15, 2012

Cowbird

How to make God laugh?  Make plans.  This seems one more illustration of this.  Think, Catharine:  why would there be one more largish bird left in the nest, without feathers?  One more cowbird for the world.   Not the plan.  Not the plan at all.

The plan
Was to empty the fan duct,
Make it impervious
To re-nesting sparrows.
God laughs at our plans,
Maybe not so much
To make us feel foolish
But maybe
To show us
There is always more
To the story.
My job was to clean out
Old nesting material.
At the end of the wadded grass and weeds
A baby bird fell out,
Naked and the size
Of a mostly grown sparrow.
We put him back,
Moved the task to fall.

Today we realized
It was probably
A cowbird.
We shoved a cowbird back
Into the sparrow*s nest.
Now there will be
One more cowbird
In the world.
Not exactly
The plan.
Still
It matters
To him or her
And cowbirds everywhere.

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