Learning To Fly Poem by Val Morehouse

Four pearls lay tucked in the fronds
of my front door wreath.
Eggs. Smooth. Warm. Alive.
Each day I touched them before leaving
them safe under their feathery mother’s eye.

Each evening I returned to find them
still warm, still safe. Some nights the
mother bird cradled them asleep in the wreath,
a living door ornament softly breathing.
One morning there were four

bare bodies heaped, new hatchlings
huddled tight as little berries,
their bright blood showing
through their skin.
They were all beak on

naked, wobbly necks. Fuzz
soft as dandelion silk quilted each
small back. Soon enough their
beaks flung open as if on springs,
as I stroked the tiny backs before leaving.

Before long small tails emerged,
and brown feathers brushed with cream,
stippled them with shadow. Touching each
before my daily leaving I whistled, “Sweet, sweet.”
Only two were left nestled in the wreath today.

First I took one, then the other in hand.
The big one fixed his dark eye on me, and leapt
into the sky from my hand as if he’d always known the way.
Small One when did you learn how to fly? My fingers curled
around to hold the other a little more tightly.

I stroked his small head, and then opened
my fingers on weeks of watching, of touching.
With a brave squeak, the last one flew into
the light; and the trees filled with greeting
birds calling, “Free. Free. Free.”