The twelfth month of the year is a time of singular reflection. There are the plans which have gone awry, the expectations exceeded or met or dashed, the vagaries and vicissitudes of fortune. There are the joys however fleeting - the longed for rain in a summer of drought, the clean bill of health, the first smile on a beloved infant’s face. And there is hope, that most forward-facing of emotions, driving us on into the coming winter and the new year which awaits.

Birds in the Construction Zone

~~ by Lynne Viti

Seven degrees, snowdrifts

against the patio fence.

The screen porch a scene from

Hans Christian Anderson—

Wicker chairs outlined in snow,

The cat’s cardboard scratching pad ruined.

We moved here in May,

A hot spring became a blistering summer

We saw no birds—

Instead of birdsong

We heard the roar of heavy machinery

Up and down the dusty road.

The hydrangeas drooped by midafternoon,

Deer tongue lettuce in our raised bed wilted.

The noise of hammering twelve hours a day,

The loud flapping of Tyvek all night long—

No wonder the birds stayed away.

The earth movers, the compressors

Exiled all winged creatures except the pollinators.

In the fall, when seed heads

Were ready for the birds to feast on

An overzealous landscape crew

Cut back every spent bee balm

Cosmos marigold stonecrop

Leaving little for finches and sparrows.

Our slender garden, devoid of low shrubs

The patio too much like a wide city sidewalk—

Gave no shelter.

But today our luck turned.

Two juncos at the feeder,

Three more on the cedar fence,

And later, sparrows on the ground

Found something to eat in the snow.

Nothing to complain about—

The birds have arrived.

Lynne Viti‘s most recent poetry collection is The Walk to Cefalù (Cornerstone Press, 2022). A lecturer emerita at Wellesley College, she teaches poetry and literature workshops in community settings, including the Westwood Public Library and the Dover Council on Aging. As an Old Frog Pond & Studio Plein Air poet, she contributed poems to several Plein Air Poetry projects including Path Tracks Trails, Speaking of Sculpture, Refuge and Emergence.