Flutter, feed, repeat

A brownish-black-ear-muffed mother

Eurasian sparrow fluttered

In front of the round opening,

Of our blue-roofed birdhouse

 With singular snatch, gulp, re-opening,

The beak poked through.

 

Flutter, feed, repeat

Another beak appeared behind the first

The seed offering consumed so abruptly

Lunch merged into dinner into breakfast

Mom fluttering, feeding, coaxing

The fledglings into the light.

Suspending, lingering, depleting

Calories of flutter-energy

 

Mother’s Day: it passed the same as Saturday

Flutter, feed, repeat, without relief

Inconsiderate fledglings

To ignore the occasion

Without so much as a card!

The flight-feed pattern persisted

The heads poked out further,

Lunching, not launching.

 

Anti-climactically, we found the thankless chicks

Grazing our back lawn on Monday

The extraordinary moment had passed

Without fanfare

Occasionally they taxied across the yard

Briefly sporting wingmanship

Under supervision of the exhausted  flight instructor

Glad to be done with flutter, feed, repeat.

 

Prose Rendition (prior to poetry)

On an ordinary Saturday afternoon, we sat on our patio staring at the blue-roofed birdhouse in the middle of our backyard. Something extraordinary was happening. A grayish brown Eurasian sparrow was fluttering at the entrance to the house where something had poked its beak, something that had yet to experience the world beyond the birdhouse.

Every thirty seconds the mother rose up from the squirrel baffle under the birdhouse and fluttered in front of the round opening, apparently offering food to the junior sparrow. Junior was poking his head a little more into the sun, each time mom fluttered in front of the opening.  And right behind him was another beak that occasionally grabbed a morsel from mom. In spite of this neither of the fledglings offered more than the open beak to the fresh air, no matter how many times mom returned to the birdhouse with another course of seeds.

As the ritual wore on through the afternoon, we wondered how long before the mother was exhausted or the youngsters took flight. It seemed clear that the feeding at the front entrance was calculated to coax them out to where they would have to spread their wings or hit the ground. Except for the timeless virtue of retirement and the confinement of  the CoVid-19 pandemic, we probably would have lost interest in the outcome, so monotonous was the ritual of flutter, feed, repeat. We even shared vicariously the exhaustion of the fluttering mother, lingering, suspending in a flight pattern, depleting every calorie of energy she had.

The following day was Mother’s Day, and I thought how satisfactory it would be for the young to relieve their Mom, as our young attempt to do once a year. Flutter, feed, repeat went on for the entire day. We noted a couple of breaks, when mom simply disappeared, and the head appeared in the opening without the expected reward. We walked past our sliding glass door all day hoping to witness the liberation of the mother and the youngsters in the headlong act of desperation. Nothing.

It was Monday morning we discovered the chick sparrows grazing the grass and occasionally taxiing across the yard. The miracle had unfolded beyond our notice. We were disappointed that the extraordinary even had passed without fanfare. The mother had taken to the ground for the next stage of flight training. We felt a physical release of expectation and a sympathetic sigh of relief that the ritual of flutter, feed, repeat had ended.