Last Year's Nests
I viewed them the spring before – robins in our grass
and swallows flying circles around the front of the house.
Weeks later I spied their nests -
the swallows’ under an eave of our garage
and the robins’ hidden in a cluster
of our pear tree’s lovely green boughs.
I wish to have seen the eggs the robins surely laid,
but their nest was too high up.
The swallows’ nest intrigued me more,
for I was able to easily witness the hatchlings’ progress.
Periodically the parent birds came to feed them.
Eagerly I’d step off my porch when I saw the parents
swooping down and then soaring back to the sky.
Sometimes they whizzed close by my head as if to scold me
for my curiosity in their offspring; I was a trespasser on my own land.
Next year I will await them, but I think they will not return.
Always the robins return, but knowing swallows as I do. . .
their last year’s nest is sure to sit
lonely and unvisited.
Nov. 24, 2019 for Craig Cornish's "Last Year's Nests" Poetry Contest
(this actually happened several years ago, and the swallows never returned)
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