Monday's poem

Leaving Home

By Heather Bauchop

The sparrow folded
the air into a corner.
I wondered, lying on the grass
while digging potatoes out
of the lettuces, how
its parents taught it to do this:

"Climb at the angle
of the plum tree branch
in the summer, turn
as if there was a cloud
of midges, and you had
to pluck a single insect from the air;
your angle of descent
should be as if you
were going to fly through
the chicken wire on the way
to breakfast with the hens.

"And, if that doesn't work,
imagine flying away as if
you were leaving home
forever, changed
your mind in a wing beat,
turned, and flew back
to the nest.''

Heather Bauchop is a researcher living in Northeast Valley.