Читать книгу Pruning Burning Bushes - Sarah M. Wells - Страница 15

Consider the Sparrows

“Are not two sparrows sold for a penny?

Yet not one of them will fall to the ground

apart from your Father.”

—Matthew 10:29

So many come, Dad hides behind a blind

with birdshot and a rifle in the grain field.

They scatter, land, scatter, land. I hear them

chirping through the boom, watch their flight

ripple like cotton sheets lifted in the wind.

A sparrow’s egg on concrete—the yolk

seeping through the fracture—makes me stop

to look from broken shell to fretting maple

branches above, for the mother who chirrups

in her nest, twitching, head tilted, eyes blinking.

Small sparrow, tomorrow I will walk

beneath your bed just like today,

the ruined egg in smaller fragments, or vanished,

and you will scavenge the earth, fly overhead,

the sky heavy with you and your flock