She heard wings
clattering against the chimney’s
metal insert during breakfast.

Also: frantic, graceless,
bird toes
scraping against aluminum.

She left the house to keep an appointment.
She went to lunch and had meatballs.
She looked at pictures of Paris.

All quiet that night, she felt relief. 
The bird must have
found its way out.

But the next morning,
a soft tap, tap, tap
on the glass fireplace door.

A starling. Her heart flopped around,
remembering a bird trapped
in a wood stove. It had met a bad end.

Her father called starlings pests.
Her sister killed one with a shotgun.
This bird’s bright eyes followed her

as she went around the room,
drawing the shades,
opening wide every window and door.

This is what her mother would do.
She would think like a bird,
she would be matter of fact.

Pretending to be brave
she tugged at the fireplace latch.
The hinges muttered an oath.

She hid around the corner,
waiting. Wind pushed dry leaves 
across the floor.

The clock pendulum said: safe place, safe place.
Out hopped the bird,
surveying the room for a perch.

A calm voice (hers!) said: out you go,
and motioned to the open door
where sky and trees beckoned.

This was a reasonable starling.
It did not want more drama.
It had spent twenty-four hours inside a box.

With a few wingbeats, it launched, 
landing outside on the porch rail. 
Something in her took flight as well.

Dayle Olson is a poet living on the Lower Columbia River. She was a featured 2024 Northwest Voices writer at Lower Columbia College. Her pocket zines of poetry and drawings are inspired by life on the river. Zine workshops are her favorite way to encourage folks of all ages to explore creative expression. Her work appears in The Salal Review, Litmora Magazine, Thin Veil Press, And Other Poems, and The Poeming Pigeon, among others. She is a frequent contributor to the Columbia River Reader. Along with being active in the Astoria poetry community, she hosts a poetry open mic at her local brew pub.

Appears In

Cagibi Issue 25