I let your feeder go dry
I let you go hungry
I wanted you to find food
somewhere else
I want you
and your hunger
to go away.
I’ve got no heart
left here to feed you.
He loved you
He fed your hunger
I never cared
That’s what I believed
That’s what I told you
Like I was showing him
by not feeding you.
I took a picture
I made a movie
of all he abandoned
including your
empty feeder.
I looked closely at it back then
and still I ignored your hunger
All that work
Boiling water
Adding sugar
And the red
so you’d know
there was food
I need a chair
To reach it
I’d have to clean
all the grime
and fill it
I wanted you to see you were
beating yourself senseless
trying to satisfy your hunger
by pleading to someone
with a heart of stone
But now, something new
began humming
in my life
in my heart
I am not sure what
Perhaps being out with the flowers
Or Thud, your red cardinal friend
beating on my window
while you flew around
beating your hungry wings again.
I relented.
I want the hunger to go away.
I breathed in deep
and set about the work of it.
One cup of sugar
to four of water.
I set it to boil and forgot,
but Thud came back
to remind me.
It’s cooling now
And soon I will
make my way outside
to your feeder.
It would be a shame to stop now.
I can hear your wings beating
Hungry for what’s coming
Hungry for the beautiful sweet life
you used to have
I understand.
Perhaps as my new spring unfolds
what I believe is that if I feed you
I will be feeding myself.
I want the hunger to go away.
~ cj 2012.03.29
