In a swirl of plucked leaves

and savage wind, the girl flies

off a feathered bough bed; her

feet shake loose the tree tissue;

her arms beat like bent wings.

She keeps her eye to the bluff’s

edge nest where a white egg

lies blanketed in branches and

filched leaves, nuzzled under

a baggy sweatshirt, her broodling

set high out of snatch of a tramping
jealous creature with claw-tipped
fingers and fumbling mitts.

2005