For All of Our Thirty Years, My Husband Has Saved Birds

And once, on vacation, a little brown bat
trapped in a wood stove. So, things that fly:
a goldfinch that landed on our deck and

fluttered into the house, both our cats mad
with pursuit. Ken body-blocked the cats, dove
at the floor, grabbed the bird. I remember

its oil-dark eyes, its yellow and black head
turning to gaze at us from his gentle fist, then
its flight into the woods. A baby duck, lost

but too far gone to survive. Another duck,
full grown, attacked by a hawk: Ken ran
howling toward the struggle, his degree in

voice scaring the red-tail aloft: opera with
a joyous ending. He settled the duck back
in the creek and it paddled off. A pileated

woodpecker, tumbled down our unused
second chimney: Ken’s invention of ropes
pulled taut through an old stovepipe hole,

how the bird grasped that with claws and
beak, and flew, panicked, into my office--
at windows, at walls, seagull-lamenting,

until Ken got hands around it, too, as it
cursed him and tore his fingers. His calm
walk outside with the bird, how he filled

the hollow places on our patio with a hose
so it could drink. It did—and took off. Last of
all me, in no real peril except for my doubt

that any salvation lasts for long. Maybe,
back at our beginning, I was still a bit wild.
Maybe he liked knowing I could just fly away.

 

Christine Potter, Autumn Sky Poetry Daily January 24, 2024