They arrived again as the sun
prepared for impending departure.
The wetland is verdant and small
an area the developer reluctantly
set aside for nature, not knowing
or caring that the birds who once
called this whole area home,
a thousand and more each evening
are now crowded into this avian
tenement, gone are their spacious homes
given over to ours, but the birds know
when the storms we have brought ourselves
and the droughts of our unnatural meddling
they can take wing and passing by us
watch our suffering, rooted
to the ground that was once theirs.

In Memory of Louise Glück