Nuthatches
       

I stop myself from waking you
to make you listen with me.

Even in your sleep, you turn toward me.
The rosin of morning moves into the valley.

First light hits our bed. I am all pine for you.
Still, among the two-by-fours

and the pinkness of insulation: nuthatches
nesting hot within the wall:

the small thunder of them,
the clutch of them, out-flaps me.

They body themselves together, two in the sage,
the suet, the mud they've flown into our walls.

When I touch the hand you've slipped in sleep
from the covers, this soft day

triggers a choir behind our heads:
one voice wakes and finds itself hungry,

stretches a thin song to the beak,
opens one wide and wanting mouth

and wakes the others
who stretch their smallness alongside it.

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Copyright © 2019 Laura Paul Watson All rights reserved
from Colorado Review
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission