Isn’t there a bird (what’s its name?)
that collects blue

things—bottle cap, rubber band,
bits of broken

cups—to make an elaborate, sparkling
blue nest on the ground. At

a meeting, a woman spoke of
her brother, who’d just

OD’d—teary,

she said she knew it was God’s
will. We all want to be held

a little higher. Bower

bird, that’s the name, it gathers
all that blue

& arranges it into a nest                               
to make the beloved, of course, 

want to stay.

Copyright © 2019 Nick Flynn. This poem was originally published in Quarterly West. Used with permission of the author.