Young finches fall like leaves from the Valley Oak
we planted 30 years ago
to congregate at the garden’s overspray
collected in a homemade dish—fluttering, fluttering, fluttering…
waiting for space to drink from its edges.
They always startle me
from the corner of my left eye,
as if an avalanche, or branch tumbling to the ground—
releasing me from my reverie of the buck and run
of newborn calves into the long shadows of dawn.
Their mothers plod and graze in a straight line
towards the new water trough
suspicious of the gravel and concrete replacement,
stopping to listen to the familiar clunk of the pump
after browsing the first light of a new day.
The finches rise in an orchestrated flurry,
in an unheard whir
into trees, a welcome intrusion,
one more bucolic page between me
and my fears for a scattered human herd.
for JEG
drycrikjournal 