Marjorie Moorhead
Glass Half Full Today
On my favorite morning,
I’m sitting near the window
where outside hangs a simple feeder
for the birds. Mostly smaller ones
who can pull black oil sunflower seeds
through the mesh of this painted blue
metal coffee pot shape. They come and go,
come and go, taking turns swooping in,
and off again. It’s early February; a fresh
New England snowfall covers the recent brown-and-exposed.
Light grows stronger, lasts longer. We’re marching
toward votes and valentines. Ready to turn from darkness,
could there be a chance of meaningful change
in the air? On this favorite morning, I am singing
aloud, to the radio, whose station “gets me”.
Beautiful voices; beautiful words
and I sing along with them, feeling the vibration
in my heart. All of a sudden a small bird, different
from the black-capped, white-cheeked little chickadees,
settles on the bird feeder mesh, and lingers awhile.
Touched by the extraordinary sight
of its tomato-red breast under mud-brown wings,
I sing, “Hello lovely! Thank you for appearing”.
Welcome to my favorite morning.
Marjorie Moorhead is the author of Survival: Trees, Tides, Song (Finishing Line Press, 2019) and Survival Part 2: Trees, Birds, Ocean, Bees (Duck Lake Books, 2020). Her poems have appeared in Amethyst Review, HIV Here & Now, Rising Phoenix Review, and Sheila-Na-Gig Online, Porter House Review, Tiny Lit Seed, Verse-Virtual, and other journals, as well as in anthologies including Planet in Peril (Fly on the Wall, 2019), edited by Isabelle Kenyon; From The Ashes (Animal Heart, 2019), Amanda McLeod & Mela Blust; Birchsong: Poetry Centered in VT. Vol. II (The Blueline, 2018), edited by Northshire Poets Alice Wolf Gilborn, Carol Cone, David Mook, Marcia Angermann, Peter Bradley and Monica Stillman; and others. She received an Indolent Books scholarship to attend a summer 2019 workshop at the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown. Moorhead writes from the NH/VT border.
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