carving out

by John Rutherford

Carving out, the wren clings to the wall, 

feet scrabbling against the plaster, 

takes wing, falling, jumping into a stall 

but comes back again all the faster, 

twig clamped between her tiny jaws, 

poked into the beak-scraped hole, 

inspects her work, then, after a pause 

returns again to the little knoll. 

There and back again she flies, 

a clump of grass or bright moss,

a mushroom cap or leaf her verdant prize, 

securing, proofing her creche against loss.

Some gopher said it’d be an early spring, 

but what would some silly marmot know, 

around these parts El Nino’s king, 

and I still have hope we’ll see snow. 

Relentlessly she darts back and forth,

dives just in time; dark clouds to the North. 

John Rutherford is a poet living and writing in Beaumont, TX. He has been an employee of the Department of English at Lamar University since 2017. His work can be found in The Concho River Review, the Texas Poetry Assignment, and The Basilisk Tree. In 2023, his first chapbook, Birds in a Storm, was released by Naked Cat Publishing.