Fledgling

Traci Brimhall

I scare away rabbits stripping the strawberries

in the garden, ripened ovaries reddening

their mouths. You take down the hanging basket

and show it to our son—a nest, secret as a heart,

throbbing between flowers. Look, but don’t touch,

you instruct our son who has already begun

to reach for the black globes of a new bird’s eyes,

wanting to touch the world. To know it.

Disappointed, you say: Common house finch,

as if even banal miracles aren’t still pink

and blind and heaving with life. When the cat

your ex-wife gave you died, I was grateful.

I’d never seen a man grieve like that

for an animal. I held you like a victory,

embarrassed and relieved that this was how

you loved. To the bone of you. To the meat.

And we want the stricken pleasure of intimacy,

so we risk it. We do. Every day we take down

the basket and prove it to our son. Just look

at its rawness, its tenderness, it’s almost flying.