Birds

 

My late father in law cared too much about birds 

He would nurse baby birds who’d fallen out of their nests 

Taking an eye dropper filled with mashed grain 

He’d feed the doves that clustered outside his door 

Every day, from the bottles of bird seed he kept. 

The birds still came every day weeks after his death 

Waiting for the soft clucking sound he used to make 

I was surprised how long they persisted when we stopped 

But doves are just smart enough to find other food. 

When I was fifteen I once shot a kildeer for no reason 

Regretting it at once the way it dropped so suddenly 

Right on the spot my bullet had pierced its breast 

The kildeer is one of those birds who fakes injury 

To draw predators away from their nest I saw many of 

Them trying to draw my tractor away from its inexorable path. 

As I harrowed our field where I had over-run 

Thousands of unhatched eggs, ignoring the mothers’ act.

It is too late for me to ask the killdeers to forgive, 

The hands that jerked the earth mover’s triggers 

But I give them and all their cousins my children, 

The grand-daughters of a man who knew that nature 

 Is just smart enough to outlast the machinery.