Loving the Wren on my Windowsill

I don't have a photo of this bird on my windowsill, but on snowy days like today, she's there. She looks just like this one:

(photo by Wendy Luther Dickey)


I wrote one short poem about a wren a while back:

The Wren

Omnipotence

is foreign to the wren.

She is all present in her garbling song,

She is all knowing as she carries thin sticks to her nest box

She is all loving in the dawn

She is powerful in clover to the tiny bug

but the crow could swallow her,

and she would fit into my hand.

She is eager, not tense.

She is present, not passed,

She is perfect, not single,

and no helping verbs accompany her.

Her song is a breathtaking flood,

lilting , unlikely OM

to the wrenmother

And here is one by Gary Snyder. The wren in this poem is not a Carolina Wren, but close enough for what he says:

The Canyon Wren

I look up at the cliffs
But we’re swept on by                   downriver
the rafts
Wobble and slide over roils of water
boulders shimmer
under the arching stream
Rock walls straight up on both sides.
A hawk cuts across that narrow sky
hit by the sun,
We paddle forward, backstroke, turn,
Spinning through eddies and waves
Stairsteps of churning whitewater.
above the roar
hear the song of a Canyon Wren.
A smooth stretch, drifting and resting.
Hear it again, delicate downward song
Descending through ancient beds. . . .
These songs that are here and gone,
Here and gone,
To purify our ears.