Sublime

STRANGER’S CHILD Sparrow in the cobbled street, Little sparrow round and sweet, Chaucer’s bird— or if a leaf Sparkle among leaves, among the season’s Leaves— The sparrow’s feet, Feet of the sparrow’s child touch Naked rock.

“Little Warhorse,” Ernest Thompson Seton

The relationships created by the gift weave myriad relations between insects and microbes and root systems. The gift is multiplied with every giving, until it returns so rich and sweet that it burbles forth as the birdsong that wakes me in the morning.

But the humans have her in their grip, and she’ll never get free again.