winter has laid a soft sheet
on a nest left dreaming
of featherless pencil-thin necks
holding up sunny-yellow beaks
full-open, throats begging
wobbly with the weight of birth
the urgency of hunger
and looking like tulips
in the winds of early spring

these nestled lives grew wings
that waved farewell, farewell
to this gathering of sticks, hair, string and stem
flew over fields of buttercup and dandelion
or fell unnoticed, unannounced, underfoot
long before the rain turned white as a wedding dress
or a Buddhist in mourning