A Red-Winged Bird – a poem by Cynthia Pitman

A Red-Winged Bird

A simple thing
like a red-winged bird
feeding on seed left for it
in a yellow wooden birdhouse
sends me into a deep reverie.
How often we exercise dominion
with kindness, giving sustenance
to living things that can give us
no reward but for the beauty
they bring us with their mere existence.
Our bond with them is a covenant,
a resistance to the void of space
and the threat of time.
Just a flash of a red wing
leads our eyes up
and is more than enough
to bring us to our knees
and humble us.

Cynthia Pitman, author of three poetry collections, The White Room, Blood Orange, and Breathe (Kelsay Books), has been published in Amethyst Review, The Ekphrastic Review, Spirit Fire, Third Wednesday (One Sentence Poem finalist), Saw Palm: Florida Literature and Art (Pushcart Prize nominee), and other journals, and in Vita Brevis Press anthologies Pain and Renewal, Brought to Sight & Swept Away, Nothing Divine Dies, and What is All This Sweet Work?