Empty Feeders

The feeders were empty, dejected, forlorn. The lady who filled them had suddenly gone. Her time here now ended, she wakened no more: Gone from her gardens, departed her door. This little much mattered to birds on the wing, With winter now over, well into the spring. All busy with nesting, caught up in new life. No hunger in summer, no cold, bitter strife. New homes to be built: sturdy and staid. Songs to be sung and eggs to be laid. Sheltered and nurtured; the young ones appear. A sure rite of passage in the spring of each year. Fledglings near grown will be taught how to fly And soar past the tree tops up into the sky. They will learn of the hawk and its hunger for flesh: Of wicked, sly felines that hide in the brush. Then late summer grows weary and tired of play. It goes to bed earlier and earlier each day. The fall time all golden and valued the more; Birds sense coming peril past winter’s cold door. Those who remain for new season’s sharp sting, Grow restless, uneasy, not choosing to sing. Old feeders hang empty, no seed to be found . . Below only barren, forbidding, cold ground. Blue jays and the doves, all the species of finch, Chickadees, titmice, now feel winter's pinch. Woodpeckers, nuthatches, cardinals and crows, Will all group together to face winter woes. Then a morning arrives with white flakes in the air. Frigid and stark; the day reeks of despair. First jay to arrive at the earliest light, Gives out a sharp cry to all others in flight. There's someone out tending the feeders below, Tamping the snow where the cracked corn will go. And filling the hollow in that old rotten stump: Sunflower, suet, dried fruit and some nuts. Bleak landscape has kidnapped the scene down below, But all’s right in the hemlock, as well as the snow. New feeders abound, where old feeders once hung And with someone to fill them, let the new winter come.