Shared Space

by Marjorie Moorhead


Ask me why I’m so drawn to the bird feeder
outside our back window.
I’ll start telling you of big bluejays, 
cherubic chickadees, clumsy-beaked cardinals,
finches, nuthatches, wrens and even woodpeckers
who appear, eager for black oil sunflower seeds
hung in a tube with holes and perches.

Looking out, I am lost in feathers and swoops, 
satisfied hunger and cooperative-acceptance-of-other 
in shared space.
Not like our news headlines. 
Stories focused on divisiveness, 
violence, need, exploitation…greed.

The birds don’t want ALL the food. 
They want to be fed, just like the rest of us. 
Somehow, they manage to attend to need side by side, 
or in turn, yellow feathers near blue. Red feathers near brown. 
Black caps and tufted together, co-existing.


* * * * *

Marjorie Moorhead writes from the VT/NH border, surrounded by mountains in a river valley, with four season change. Her work addresses environment, survival, noticing the “every day”, and how we treat each other. Marjorie’s poems can be found in many anthologies, websites, and her two chapbooks Survival: Trees, Tides, Song (FLP 2019) and Survival Part 2: Trees, Birds, Ocean, Bees (Duck Lake Books 2020).