by Sandra Alcosser
Because of open woodland
With quivering sun patches
A bird’s eye might observe a worm
Chiseling under earth’s
Skin—because of granite boulders
Full of egg cases holding
Spiderlings—because of purple berries
Come sweet in July—chokecherry
Shadblow Nanking
Hips and haws ripening—
Branch nesters build summer nurseries
On the face of our cabin—the same family
Every year or their progeny
On ridgepole—purlin—crossbeam
Sensitive to each human gesture
Inside the window and when men
Come to paint the fascia or spray
The log base and its foundation
The nester will abandon her clutch
Of eggs—blued by mineral blood—
And begin to weave a new nest
High above squirrels and house cats
For aren’t we all pattern-making animals—
Make a beautiful thing and you’ve done all you can
To battle a friend said to me
And a people-adapted species—
Nuthatch or chickadee or these
Robins—become a kind of mother country—
Like you dear America—offering a body each day
For someone to make a wasteland—
I would like to weave with the surety
Of that robin—only a heartbeat
And a wrist wing to shape her nest—
A shaggy cup of mud and spiderweb
Come greed come windstorm—begin again
Sandra Alcosser is the author of A Fish to Feed All Hunger and Except by Nature. The founder of San Diego State University’s MFA program and editor of Poetry International, she was Montana’s first poet laureate.
Originally published on Terrain.org as part of the Letters to America series and reprinted in Dear America: Letters of Hope, Habitat, Defiance, and Democracy.
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