After the Weeping

from Out With Lanterns

The morning I cry and say everything,
the cowbird sings from the telephone wire.
I hate cowbirds, those absent parents, 
brood parasites who drop eggs in robin, 
finch, bluebird nests, then take off. 
I was crying about mothering, 
how it encompassed me, buoyed me,
and now they’ve flown and 
and I stare at trees wondering 
what to do now. What do I do now? 
It’s easy to feel I’ve spent years doing 
nothing 
on these empty, quiet days. 
When the robin is alone again, 
what is she to do but spy the cowbird 
as he adventures out in the vast sky, 
while she still sits nest-bound, having
nurtured his babies so well that they were 
strong enough to fly, to leave her too.
The work is remembering she has wings.

A cowbird egg in a Robin’s Nest, photo courtesy of audubon.org