Atop the chicken-wire fence, a scarlet cardinal
faces me, afternoon sun blazing on its breast,
then turns to offer a dun back, and turns again.

You loved most birds, spent hours photographing
the mourning doves that built their nest on the rusting
box that framed our living-room air-conditioner.

We even feared to turn it on, not wanting to disturb
the nestlings. Daily upon homecoming, we peered
up at them, willing them to take the leap, to risk

the branch of the sycamore tree that almost touched
that window. Our tree-house, we called it when we
first moved in, glorying in the height, the ample shade.

Did you dream of birds when you lay ill, shape-shifting
into a blue-jay, your boyhood totem, and opening your
beak to harshly call from your perch in a sugar maple?

Perhaps you are that cardinal, visiting me here in Virginia,
cheering me on with his bright breast, although he won’t
fly toward me when I ask you for a sign.

Or you are now a seabird near the ocean where I live—
a hungry gull or sandpiper—running, always running
along the shifting lip of foam.

© by Penny Harter.
Used with the author’s permission.