By mid-June the last trillium
displays a Lenten vigor.
Her triplet of white petals
die out to starved purple
but her energy is set in seeds.
Gray phoebe shares her usual
nesting site with us, her nest
wedged into a corner of the eave
of her shared summer cabin.
Her young are a growing pile
of brown energy fledging
her mother’s common gray.
This morning their hunger
was expressed in angry peeps,
petulant travesty of birdsong,
and we wakened to their need
an hour before dawn. We learn
to listen to our fellow residents’
children in our common hunger.
Without our futile guidance
of a withered spring metaphor
they live almost on their own
and by tomorrow perhaps
they will have flown – with
luck and courage to survive
our perilous common air.