Tear Here

a poem of kinship & place

This morning, I cleaned out one of the bluebird boxes, along with a second birdhouse recently vacated by a family of Carolina wrens. The birdhouse is actually a white-speckled, ceramic orb with a wren-sized hole, which meant I had to pull the nesting material out a little at a time. 

With each pull, spilled a story of place and its kinship with humans (and non-humans). As I cleared out a season of leaves, twigs, dried mud and moss, I remembered a poem I once shared here. If you're a longtime subscriber, you may remember it as well.

*
Tear Here

There are pieces of us
woven in 
the wrens nest—

a salt-and-pepper tangle 
threaded through 
poplar twigs, 

wads of moss
and leaf skeletons, 
white fur from the cat

and a strip of cellophane
with directions to
Tear Here.

Here’s a photo I took years ago of a Carolina wrens nest; a remarkable tribute to resourcefulness.

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Thank you for reading a small spectacle. For more poems that take pause and give reverence to our wild kin, my latest collection, No One Ever Says is available in the Lulu bookstore. You can find also find copies of my chapbook, Every Note, a Lantern from Kelsay Books and on Amazon.