Busy Little Sparrow

A busy little sparrow is neatening

up my yard again, nit-picking

tiny fits of fluff, housekeeping

miniscule debris from my

just-hatched garden.

This immigrant offspring, common

as crumbs on a sidewalk table,

makes herself at home in city

blocks and parking lots and in

my pocket garden.

Favored by God’s eye, discerned

in song and story, in thrall to

biology; she goes about

her preparations

for coming generations.

I stand en pointe waiting for the

comic sight of scrawny pledges with

open beaks and newborn notions.

As a keeper of plants, I have vested interest

in the propagation of species.

Stop Button

I’d like to freeze-frame

snap, click,

the perfect moments

of nature—when the

neon-yellow tulips are at

their smartest bent, when

the scarlet-red cardinal with

orange beak lands on the black

wire of the seed-holder, when

the blushing robin scrumps

up a wiggling worm—but nature

is never still.

It keeps

on moving and changing. Past

perfection—past lime lacy leaves,

pearlized blossoms and

rich red roses—past

deterioration

right on to

degradation. There is no

stop button. No way of

holding back the eventual

disintegration that always

follows life’s finest

hours.