FEEDING THE BIRDS
            Robert Cording
                p. 1991
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I wanted to do something
  After the sharp-shinned hawk
    Swept through my utopia

Of feeders--each one filled
  With seeds for all kinds
    Of birds--and snapped the neck

Of a junco pecking about
  On the ground, content to eat
    (or so it seemed) what fell

From the beaks of purple finches.
  For weeks my two-year-old had
    Named cardinal and goldfinch,

Chickadee, titmouse, nuthatch,
  The feeders gathering them
    From the reddening maples

Where starved leaves drifted away
  From their branches, nights colder,
    The sky rehearsing for winter.

I'd often sit at the window,
  Pleased by the way goldfinches
    Yellowed the air as they waited

For their turn or purple finches
  Dropped from the shed roof
    One after another. Even the jays--

Over-sized, bullying, loud-mouthed--
  Were kept in check: enough
    For all, they ate their fill

And left. And then the hawk came,
  Took up residence, perching
    On the electric wires, and waited

For those moments when, unwary,
  Trusting my simple paradise,
    A fattened junco might forget

Its instinct for shadows in the sun.
  I thought of banging on windows,
    A saving alarm, though

I could never be quite sure
  Of that brief, startling moment
    When, sweeping down from the air,

The hawk would choose to change
  The balance at the feeder.
    In the end, I did nothing.

The birds leanred to save themselves.
  In time they grew accustomed
    To what is and isn't possible,

Accepting, it seemed, the random
  Attacks with poise and equanimity,
    Scattering into the thinning trees

And then regrouping, one by one,
  To eat their small measure
    Those afternoons of fading light.


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