Spring Poem

In which I try to continue posting one spring poem a day for National Poetry Month . . .

It was spring. All the birds were building their nests
and I had no nest.
They were settling down and finding a place to rest
and I had no place
to rest, or to lay my head and dream a while.
So I envied them: the robins, so domestic,
bringing insects to their fledglings in the branches
of the maple tree, through whose green leaves I could see
the flash of orange breasts,
the blackbirds and grackles proclaiming their presence, loudly
iridescent, and the mallards on the pond, the males
with their green-banded necks, the females
dressed in brown, like Quakers. They sat on the water
as though upon a green, reedy mattress,
comfortably bobbing up and down,
and I wished more than anything for a pillow
or a blanket to wrap around myself,
as soft as duck feathers, or even a coverlet made of leaves
so I could pull the green of it over myself,
to sleep and sleep and sleep
and dream of flying.

(The image is American Robin by John James Audubon.)

This poem was originally published on my poetry blog, here: “Spring Poem” by Theodora Goss