Photo by Soo Ann Woon on Unsplash

 

Matins

I

Yesterday, birds found their way under the netting,

beaked off most of the strawberries.

The birds’ gift—next summer more wild

strawberry plants scrambling over the back lot.

Small jewels tasting like stale crackers,

barely a hint of the piquant red-sugar

of the big beauties the birds have stolen.

II

5 o’clock, deep in sleep on the deck,

I’m awakened by birdsong—a chorus

of robins, tanagers, Oregon juncos,

and tiny blue-feathered somethings—

warbling, trilling, twittering.

Not quite harmony.

Snatches of random tunes—

a snippet of “Little Liza Jane,”

now a bit of “Freight Train,”

now something like a hymn:

“May the Circle be Un-

broken,”

now a dueling din of chirrups,

tweedles, and tweets.

III

I rouse myself and pad through the damp grass

to the berry patch to pick a few leftovers

for breakfast before the choristers finish

their encore and beat me to them. This dewy

dawn light brings out truest colors—

leaves, strawberries, yellow-ribbon snake,

three small blue feathers.

IV

Pearly sky, morning star, wisp of waning moon.

I imagine the warblers’ berry-colored repertoire

includes tunes about star, moon, and strawberries—

yesterday’s and tomorrow’s.

Judy Brackett Crowe lives in the California foothills of the northern Sierra Nevada. Her poems have appeared in Fish Anthology 2022, California Fire & Water, EPOCH, the Maine Review, Commonweal, Midwest Review, Cloudbank, Subtropics, Innisfree Poetry Journal, and elsewhere. She is author of The Watching Sky (Cornerstone Press, 2024) and Flat Water: Nebraska Poems (Finishing Line Press, 2019).

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Published in the March 2020 issue: View Contents
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