My aunt, drowning in birdcalls, telephones
to say a wren has built its nest within
the little thoughts of her TV. A cardinal
is flying backwards through her porcelain

and she can't stand it. Sparrows
have found the seeds among her early days;
a plover's lit upon her love of Charlotte Brontë,
her kitchen's filled with hopping chickadees,

what should she do? In her weakened state,
she cannot shoo them from their scurrying
across her long-held views and windowsills,
and one is pulling at her last heartstring

as if it's just some worm come out in the rain,
forced up from the soil in search of warmth.
A hawk is diving toward her Wyeth plate,
two grackles bit a prejudice to death

and even as she speaks, a mockingbird
is making toward her bed. My aunt,
who played the violin for Bernstein once,
adored his eyebrows and his stiff starched pants,

rode in rumble seats and thought she saw
Picasso in a brothel sipping chocolate shakes,
has no will left, she says. The mourning doves
have claimed her closets for their own. Pine siskins take

liberties, such liberties. A thousand miles away,
I hold the hambone into which she weeps,
and hear, behind her voice, the purple finch,
the evening grosbeak and the rapt bluejays.