Small, Seed-Eating Songbirds
By Ava Ermiger
What time of day do the finches feed?
Soon they will rip apart my dear father’s
sock full of seeds.
Open-knit tights,
double-knotted and strangled.
Hung loosely,
on a tree he planted himself
years ago, when I was small
and everything seemed impossibly tall.
This tree, still colossal in structure, or
perhaps (more likely) me still small,
bare now, and shivering, caught
in the exhale of December’s breath,
naked, or would be,
if it weren’t for the little songbirds
hovering at its neck.
