Alone at the kitchen table
with my breakfast and resolutions,
a tap against glass
announces a nuthatch
perched on the outer sill.
Only he and distant city lights
against a foreground of dark
on a twenty-below-zero morning.
The bird tilts his head, cranes his neck
as if trying to peer inside.
Not quite focusing on me sitting right here
before he flies away to some distant tree
or nest of leaves. Soon another tap
lifts my eyes from cereal
to find him trying
to fly right through the window
despite the Christmas decals
making all the more obvious
the solid barrier between.
He keeps disappearing into the dark,
then reappearing
as a smash against glass.
Not hard enough to injure
but forceful, like wanting an answer
before I can understand the question.
I notice too my own reflection,
stern as my grandpa whenever he waited
another’s turn playing cards.
What is to be done?
I hear no words in the syllables of beak
as the bird pecks
all four corners of the window
in final attempt to gain entry.
Micki Blenkush lives in St. Cloud, Minnesota, and works as a social worker. She was selected as a 2017-2018 fellow in poetry for the Loft Literary Center’s Mentor Series program and was a 2015 recipient of an Emerging Artist Grant awarded by the Central Minnesota Arts Board. Her writing has recently appeared in Gyroscope Review, Gravel, Midway Journal, Postcard Poems and Prose, Typishly, and Crab Creek Review. Her website is mickiblenkush.com.
Appears In
Cagibi Issue 5
