The fourth grade girl did not yet know the lesson
of waiting, so she gave her teacher, my husband, the bluebird
house she had built for her own yard
and watched while it remained unpopulated
two seasons.
He nailed his birdhouse gift to a little gray poplar
in our field and we waited another two years.
We studied bluebirds,
knew we’d have to clean out the house
for another family next year, if a family ever came.
Today his arm stops me, pointing to the little poplar
twenty feet away where blue and orange ignite
a branch like a match flame: a male bluebird.
The female darts out of the birdhouse’s black hole
and eyes us from another branch.
The birds hesitate. They scoop to other trees
away from us. They postpone their nesting
until we are well away, until
when?
I’m learning to wait
for the curl of satisfaction that comes
more often than not. I hold
hope like a pilot light
until the time
that is no time, when reasonless beings burn:
Now.
- Ruth M. April 2006
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