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Spanish Sparrows
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The language seems the same; brown and tan birds twirl
and sing from the rooftop, while another trio
searches for food scraps. A different pair blends
into the bark, watches, heads jerk to the right,
back to the middle, then left. They flit near the beehive.
…..
Earlier this summer, I watched a male sparrow
from my New Hampshire porch. He repeated his monotonous
song as he watched his female: procumbent, dead
in the middle of the yard. He sang for a week. Alone.
Other females visited. He harangued them away.
…..
Here in Zaragoza, the sparrows and I,
on this hot, dry and windless afternoon,
share the siesta. I am the same capering,
exhausted woman. Is it a marvelous error, as Machado
writes, to believe that the bees make honey from my old failures?
…..
….
This poem is from the chapbook Life On The Edge (Finishing Line Press), and is available at https://www.finishinglinepress.com/product/life-on-the-edge-by-nancy-wheaton/
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Life on the Edge is a collection of poems that reflect various perspectives of human life happening within the natural world. The reader visits water worlds in Below the Surface, and the woods in Squirrel Neighborhoods and Haunted House, for example. We are unknowingly held as we navigate drunken episodes, aging, and differences, culturally and socially. We matter. We are important. We are deeply loved. A sense of belonging is conveyed in Life on the Edge.
Nancy spends summer and fall in New Hampshire and now winters and in Naples, Florida. This recent snowbird move to Florida offers explorations of tropical habitats. She is drawn to water in its many iterations: lakes, the sea, canals, rivers, rain, and puddles! She spent her childhood years in Santiago, Chile and Evreux, France as a daughter in an Air Force family. She used to play soccer for a team named “Las Amas de Casa”. She volunteers for Habitat for Humanity and is a docent at the Art Institute in Naples, FL. She is the founder of Wheaton Writing Academy.
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