Sparrow

Although you see the world different than me

“Child of Mine” – Carole King

You run to me, child of mine,
just five, tow-haired, face smeared by the grime of a long day’s play.

“Look!” Your voice quivers as you lift your cupped hands --
a downy, edging sparrow,

its tiny chest rising, falling, coal eyes lit, darting (perhaps pleading),

a wing splayed out, awry.
Your next words are a supplication: “Can we save it, Mom. Can we?”

“We’ll try.”

Your heart yearns (as does mine) to revive this wounded sparrow --

so it can utter again, lift its voice, fly.
We stock an old shoebox with cotton, soft rags, dry leaves,
and you gently place our sparrow inside.

Eyedropper, warm water, soothing words, our ministering begins.

We wrap its broken wing with sewing thread.
You ask, “Do you think it knows we’re trying to save it?”

“Maybe,” I say. (But what do I know of the wild?)

Night falls. Its chest slowly rises -- its coal eyes dart, though dimmed.

Our sparrow is still alive. We sleep.
Stillness, and grief, arrive with the morning sun.
Our patient lies unmoving, its eyes fixed and dull.

The shoebox becomes its casket.
You (my beautiful child) lay our sparrow in a deep hole we dig in the garden

next to my Summer Sunshine rose.
You slowly shovel soil into the grave and ask,

“It’s flying now, right, Mom?”

“And singing, too,” I reply.