WREN AND SONG

The wrens returned again this spring

to nest within the wooden winter feeder

swinging from the Maple’s limb     impossibly

minute   the opening serves them now

for seasons beyond memory     smaller

than some snowflakes I have seen they

stand their ground against all threats

sparrow   blackbird   prowling tabby cat

and wake us    every morning    to the music

of their song   a sort of anguished challenge

hurled at dawn that reaffirms their lives

confirming that against all odds

they still survive

I think of them as our wrens   the same

as last year coming home again   and yet

the likelihood is generations of them

lived and died   perhaps   no lineage at all connects

them year to year   just some coincidental

happening attracts a mating pair to our yard

our feeder   convenient to their need

and I suspect that we are not unlike them

in our journey through the centuries     we come

and go and pass this way or that and hurl   from

time to time the fact that are here at all at

some deaf dawn   but in the grander plan

mattering not one bit less then wren and song

not one bit more than here and gone.

– Susan A. Katz