they come like morning birds
to feeders. Full of their own great hunger,
they loose their insistent

racket as they settle,
in the rising light, to your own familiar
places, your sheltered cove

your shaded lot. Even your house,
small, blue-roofed, full of gleaming wood,
is not quite safe, no haven

from their cries. They crowd 
the feeders, bicker on railings, dunking 
themselves in the bird bath, 

shaking small droplets into air, 
all that wild cacophony intruding on your 
sleep, that rest you like 

to think you’ve earned, paying dear 
in grief’s deep coin. Somewhere else a well 
goes dry, a child cannot be roused.

To morning things are all the same, 
the business of one more day begun.  Sorrows 
like birds come home to roost,

raucous and desperate, full 
of themselves, battalions of impatient need. 
Their greed as light bleeds into day.