Half-dead –
dew-slick feathers
smack in the middle of the lawn,
I kneel &
follow its watery eye
-line to a nest it left too early,
the pink pink
of a mother blackbird
sticking out now from the rabble.
Tucking two
gloved hands under
its tummy, its legs kicking like a toddler,
I offer it up
like an oblation
to the sky, a cry of repentance
for my own
deviation, as if
I had fallen & not flown.