Young robins have woven a hag’s wig into their first nest on the platform of my front porch downspout. When I leave the house through the front door, the female flees to the wire fence along the sidewalk. Then to either a low branch on a redbud or a higher vantage on a nearby silver maple. She scolds me with a beautiful song, a morning greeting of sorts, even during the middle of the day. I choose the long way to walk around her ragged nest. I cannot see young chicks yet. And I rarely hear birdsong, with these muffled ears, anymore. But I keep watch for the father, who is alert and close, as I retrieve the mail or set out for a trek of a mile or two. Whenever the mother stays on her nest as I appear on my front porch, I whisper to her. Asking her to name a daughter after my dog, Sadie. Telling her there are no red-tailed hawks in the sky or warning her of danger if she needs to be wary. For a month, I will be an uncle. To the ancestor of a creature with hollow bones made of flutes.
Michael Brockley is a retired school psychologist who lives in Muncie, Indiana. His prose poems have appeared in AGNI Online and Blue Fire and are forthcoming in Gargoyle Online and Bay to Ocean Journal. Brockley's first full collection of prose poems, Iron Pennies, will be released in September.
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