In the fading light
on the last day of January, I hear it:

a loud, merry squawk! on the front porch.

First time I’ve heard that precious sound
since last April, when the silence set in
without warning, when the whole nestful
of beautiful finch fledglings in my door wreath
died.

Season after season, tiny life
came into being
on my portal,
taking wing from sky-blue eggs
to blue-egg sky, until the April day
when it stopped.

The hardest part of loss
apart from the emptiness
is the unanswered why.

For now we see through a glass darkly,
wrote the Apostle in his chapter on love.
Those words echo in my memory
as I look through the etched-glass window
of my door, where the silhouette
of the visitor perches on
the replacement wreath.

I don’t know, but I suspect
he’s the father, returning to
scout for a safe nesting-place
as in seasons past.

I don’t know if I am hoping
he’ll choose this wreath
as bird courtship
goes into full swing.

I don’t know, here on the cusp
of Valentine’s Day, if my heart
is willing to risk
giving itself away
after such
a shattering

but at the sound of that squawk!
it instantaneously leaps

and I can’t help remembering
how Grandma used to phone me,
saying
I just wanted to hear
your precious voice.

You cannot know, little Finch
on the other side of the glass,
how precious your voice is to me
or how I marvel
at your resiliency.

In the long continuum of things,
our stories are interwoven
as much as the grasses and tiny flowers
and random sweet feathers in all
your former nests.

If you dare to build again
here in my sanctuary
I will dare to love again.

If you do not, I will understand
that your new life will go on elsewhere
as I go on cherishing
every bright memory
and the sound.

The return