Each Morning the Garden Awakens

Joel Vega

A wren high up on a branch defends his territory,
punctual as a clock is punctual in announcing the hours.
I could not see him, only his warbling drifts
through the open windows.
I tossed between the pillows, asked for another reprieve,
for an hour, while bird twits from branch to branch,
marking his aerial kingdom.
Between us the nodding tulips, hardy anemones.
Between us the flash of a rival bird, a wayward tadpole.
His steady chirps float and yet he does not call the moment fate.
Engaged and yet judgement is distant in his world, grief peripheral.
What he owns is old persistence.
And I, restless in the deep pillows, longs
for what passes, for the warmth that like rain water
seeps out from the holes in my hands.