I wanted to write a poem for my mother and I had thought to theme it after the birds, because she’d come to like birds like we do. By coincidence, the same week she moved in with us, a pair of wrens nested in our hanging flowers–just ruining them, by the way. But we got to watch them grow up and, by the time mom had passed several weeks later, the babies they raised had gone. I thought that sounded very poetic.
But if you know anything about wrens, you know they’re loud and boisterous. They sing so proudly, make a lot of noise and draw attention to themselves–and that just wasn’t my mom. I couldn’t make anything work. After a while, I settled on a more fitting bird: the towhee. Towhees stick close to the ground–that’s mom! She was grounded (which I appreciate now–I spent too much of my life with my head in the clouds). She was cautious (like towhees, who peak out from the bushes), but she would speak up, and this, too, is like the towhees whose unmistakeable “SWEET” sometimes breaks the evening silence. They are modest, but still colorful and, like mom, towhees bravely look after their young. This poem is for her.
mother towhee
I heard a noise
in the early summer twilight
before the cicadas started
their buzzy arboreal concert
a rustling, come
from under the thicket
out of the old leaves trapped
under the brush and
blackberries
out she hopped
into the clearing
tenderly, on wary legs
glancing attentively
her rufous, brown, and white
muted by time, once hiding her
stealthy among the leaves,
flashed brilliant against the
green grass and moss
and foraging for seeds
fallen from the feeder, she
regarded me carefully
I saw on her body
the marks of her life
close calls with a pouncing cat,
desperate leaps into thorns
to avoid a hungry hawk,
and felt in her the weariness
of one who had
raised her broods and
endured her griefs and
emerged whole, at peace
with herself
and I knew then that
if I could have built for her
a safe house to suit her, and
if I could have healed her wounds,
I could never have given her
more than she had
given herself
so, sighing, I
thanked her for her time,
sat with her a moment longer,
and watched her fly away
Thinking Peacefully 