Feeding the Waiting

Sunlight cracks the dull orange plastic,

casting shadows like fractured promises.

Sparrows scuffle at the feeder’s rim,

shells scatter over cracked patio stones.

A twig snaps underfoot,

a clumsy bird takes off,

a blur of feathers and scattered hopes.

They gather, small and fierce,

holding to that pile of seeds

like I clutch fragments of hope

when mornings drag too long.

Each shell cracked is a reckoning,

a tiny weight shifted, given away.

The feeder is more than plastic and seed—

it is the small mercy of waiting,

where hunger meets the stubborn pulse of life.