Love Poem, with Birds by Barbara Kingsolver

They are your other flame. Your world

begins and ends with the dawn chorus,
a plaint of saw-whet owl, and in between,

the seven different neotropical warblers

you will see on your walk to the mailbox.

It takes a while. I know now not to worry.

 Once I resented your wandering eye that 

flew away mid-sentence, chasing any raft

of swallows. I knew, as we sat on the porch 

unwinding the cares of our days, you were 

listening to me through a fine mesh of oriole,

towhee, flycatcher. I said it was like kissing

through a screen door: You’re not all here.

But who could be more present than a man

with the patience of sycamores, showing me

the hummingbird’s nest you’ve spied so high 

in a tree, my mortal eye can barely make out 

the lichen-dabbed knot on an elbow of branch.

You will know the day her nestlings leave it.

The wonder is that such an eye, that lets not

even the smallest sparrow fall from notice,

beholds me also. That I might walk the currents

of our days with red and golden feathers

in my hair, my plain tongue laced with music.

That we, the birds and I, may be text and

illumination in your book of common prayer.

~ from How to Fly (In Ten Thousand Easy Lessons)  (HarperCollins Publishers, 2020)