Taking Measures

 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)