If you’ve read my poems, you know

I have the joy of feeding birds

in a back-yard–fast-food-free-fly-zone

of shepherds crooks, hung with suet holders, stuffed

and Droll Yankee Spinners

filled with black oil sun flower seeds.

It’s a hobby.

More, a commitment and a simple tithe I offer

for the much recompensed pleasure

of watching, to date,

some thirty species of birds,

black and gray fox squirrels

and brown squirrels and rabbits and voles

and my neighbors predatory cat

as they create a wild kingdom

outside our screen porch windows.

They are the origin and subjects of many of my poems

and the causes for much laughter, and “oohs” and “aahs”

for their frolic, their acrobatic antics

of a fall or summer evening.

But today, a different lesson taught.

As I filled the near empty feeders,

a chick-a-dee scolded me with

an angry, hungry,

hurry me along,

to, “Come on! Get on with it!”

so he and his flock might feed….

But then, an uninvited, guilty thought:

That little, chirping, energetic fellow

might not be chiding me for my

tardy filling of feeders.

He may have just as likely

been singing praises,

praying to his feathered god

or to me for that matter,

giving thanks for providing him, at last,

with sustenance.

I felt humbled,

humiliated by my kicked knee reaction

to my feathered wards orisons ,

for ascribing such human motivations to

Mothers favorite little piece of happiness.

Just because my brothers act with such

impatient unforgiveness

as a matter of course

doesn’t mean this sainted chick-a-dee

should be accused of acting accordingly,

so much like humanity.

What an insult to the aviary world,

this assumption of human thought and deed!

I apologized to him, immediately,

for dragging him down

to my lower, dirt bound world.