There were sparrows
in the tree at the window,
doing sparrow things—
ordinary flitters, dull brown leaps.
So busy with their living.
But who looks at sparrows,
who can measure the fierce
in their tiny teardrop bodies?
What I wonder then
is how contained I might be,
the shape of myself, the leaps
and wing brushes of my own busy living.
It took them one hour to build
a complete idea of themselves.
Twigs and leaves and grass,
a length of lilac string and
one dull copper-colored button.
So I could say then—yes, why not,
Isn’t this what a nest should be?
Ordinary flitters. Fierce. Soft-lined
at the center by furious little feet.

The woods beyond the village are quite small—
just a hiccup of round green after the last farmhouse
with its lonely cow and stationary donkeys.

At first light, though, the copse of trees haunt
with cold shadow and sky branch. We were talking
of our fragile, both just unwinding a thread from a frayed cuff.

Foot to leaf and tuck of chin down into our warm wool scarves
and then up, cloudward. We were caught as the starlings
exploded off the oaks and danced. Painfully alive with that cold

morning air in the little bullets of their soft gray bodies.
Over the cliff they all went. We, too, startled at the drop of thirty
meters from its hidden edge of mounded leaves.

You followed the birds with an eye, and I stood at the cliff edge
and thought, no, not yet, maybe when it’s warmer, because
for now we know nothing of wing, we know nothing yet of flight.

Michelle Bailat-Jones, St. Legier, Switzerland