Night Weather – Fall, Week 9: Abandoned Nests

​Cynthia Reeves, “Seasons of Change,” 1971-2

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ix

abandoned bike
in the helmet
an old wren's nest

From the handlebars of an abandoned bicycle hangs a helmet, and in the helmet a wren built a nest. I have seen nests on the top of mopheads propped in the corner of a porch to dry out but then temporarily forgotten. Nests in light fixtures by rarely used doors. A goose nest on a deck in the leaves that should have been swept away in the fall.

You leave it, says Nature, and I will take it.

*****

small but unconfined
the bird
singing on an under branch

the door ajar
the bird keeps hopping
just out of the light

Keep a green tree in your heart and perhaps a singing bird will come.—said to be a Chinese proverb

that moment when the bird sings very close
to the music of what happens.—Seamus Heaney

moon on the water
inseparable the shadows
of flying birds

the blue shade
of the pines
swallows the blue jay

In times of profound change, the learners inherit the earth, while the learned find themselves beautifully equipped to deal with a world that no longer exists.—Eric Hoffer

The living? You pass them on the road.
The dead? They're home already.
—Li Po (Li Bai), translated by J.P. Seaton, Bright Moon, White Clouds

alone
I dream of things
that will never happen

raking leaves--
at the last we can see
the robin's nest