She Sits

On this dreary Monday, while I’m waiting on the rain to stop falling, I thought I’d share a poem I wrote last fall after observing a bird on a wire while I was walking to the hospital to visit a parishioner. Sometimes we all need a little help standing against the wind and cold. But we also need to know when to let go of our extra baggage and fly free.

Fluffed up and full of feather
  she sits
Undaunted by the drizzle or my presence
  she sits
Outside of this place of prognoses and outcomes
  she sits

In the summer, she will grow smaller,
  finding the way within herself to
    commune with nature so deeply as to
      only be what is needed for the moment.

In those warmer times
  such defenses
    as she bears now
      are not needed.

But now, now she is bristle-full of an inner warmth
  that holds the cold at bay.

And as I walk past her, some small part of
  her courage comes with me down white halls
    full of soft beeps
      where it is needed so.