It would have lived had where we sleep
still been the woods that now begins
thirty feet or so from the window.
It lay in the palm of my hand. Its head
sloped away from its wing and
opened the calm pink of its neck.
I think of our daughter. I think of
my wife. I think of it all as I lay
the wren under a layer of mulching
leaves under the bird feeder, the leaves
entering the alchemy of compost,
what we and all there is can become.
Above her soggy last nest, and a darkened
space, the feeder is sunflower-filled. I walk
back into our house, go to the window.
Chickadees, white-throated sparrows,
a cardinal are back at the feeder. Later
today I will need to fill it again.