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The Nest

James Mulhern

I imagine you looking at the robins’ nest
in the Maple outside your bedroom window.
You can’t see the blue eggs, but you watch
the male bring his partner dry grass and twigs.
He offers dirt, too, dipped in a birdbath
or garnered from a swampy spot at the yard’s edge.
The female cements the nest,
protecting her brood of four or five.

Sometimes you stare at your body cast,
a remnant of your spinal surgery,
but most hours you watch the tree,
the birds, the clouds, and the sky.
The days pass slowly, but at the two-week mark,
you see tips of yellow mouths,
like tulips or other flowers
you used to smell in the lawn beyond.

You think of the day your hardened mold
cracks open and you walk outside.
How you will look upward, smiling widely,
scanning the blue and clouds and sun,
hoping to glimpse a fledgling, or any free bird,
flying far across the sky.
Where it travels is not your concern.
Your joy is that it does.

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