Red Breasts

painting by gerhard richter.

Red Breasts

“The characteristics in human nature which we love best,

grow in a soil with a strong mixture of troubles.”

--Harry Emerson Fosdick.

A robin has built

her nest in eaves of our deck;

expecting chirps soon.

She said smiling solemnly near sunset,

underscored by airliners speaking jet.

When you open

the back door, mother bird

would fly away.

“I wish she would realize that

we mean her no harm,” my wife said.

“Do you speak Robin?” I asked.

My tall lady held her iphone

over her head, snapping images

of first three lovely blue eggs,

then later three featherless babes.

Our tom cat & his neighborhood puss-pals

                    left their dusty paw prints on top

            of the highest railing, 

while crows & grackles                       

                                             perched precariously 

                                                                                      near by

                    as mother & father brought

                    worms, grubs, beetles & seeds

                    to three gaping hungry mouths.

Odd, perhaps, that we felt so protective,

             hoping calamity was not an elective,

                         watching three fat fuzzy heads bob

                                   above the edge of the bird’s nest,

                          as we accepted the emotional job

           of providing the babies the best

                          surveillance that we could muster,

fully understanding that actually we would

                          be nothing more than witness to the

events not yet upon us;

like the teutonic shelves shifting

with the inevitable continental drift

devil-deep beneath us,

like the new steam fissures sprouting

on Mt. Adams, that is

Mt. St. Helens’ little brother,

readying itself to become

another May magma event,

like the rare trio of ghost rider tornados 

brewing within the thunderous womb

of the lightning-laced dark skies above, 

like the mysterious change of course

for Asteroid H2000, an ice giant

with a granite core

that just now

is headed our way.

Nature has agenda.

We are but pawns ready for

sacrifices to come.

Glenn Buttkus

Posted over at dVerse Poets Poetics

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