I wrap them like fine china in
layers
of old newspapers and bubble
wrap
and still I know that the
moving man
will drop the box or hit a
pothole
on that bad stretch of road
heading
out of town and something will
crack.
All spring I have watched song
sparrows readying their nest
in the rotting
crotch of a birch tree, laying
in twigs
and leaves and feathers,
lacing it up
with string pulled from the
canvas
deck chairs, only to have the
arborist
take the tree down on a day I
wasn’t there
to remove, first, the nest
with its four
mottled brown-and-white eggs—
which needed to be done, he
said,
to save our house from a
windstorm
whose inevitable coming he
foretold.
I still tiptoe past their
empty rooms
at night, throw salt over my
left
shoulder, batch the bad things
that pop up on my news feed
into
groups of three, but leave my
phone
in the other room at night,
willfully
believing that bad news will
wait,
that one can take one’s
medicine
in the morning, that the sun
will rise.
(first published in Bookends Review, 2017)
