“Chickadee” by Erin Block

There are three kinds of chickadees here:

black-capped, mountain,

and this one who can only use one leg,

and careens to land in the feeder 

like a bush plane to the lake 

where I was once dropped with a canoe and a gun. 

His right leg’s pointed down and back

like a twist-tie holding up a spring seedling.

And it would’ve been dragging 

like a sled with a sister in it

if he couldn’t fly—

but he takes off slow 

and lands in pine boughs that hold him

like cupped hands waiting for rain

that comes two months too late. 

And then one day his leg’s pointing forward.

And then one day he uses it to hold a sunflower seed,

which he cracks open with his beak in three tries. 

And then one day I can’t recognize him anymore

because he’s every bird I see. 

Maybe he healed himself—

maybe that’s what I’m expected to do.

But still I wonder where he went,

where I lost him to, and realize,

this is how friends fall away like birds to wind,

like air in bones you blow through

and hear nothing back,

so you decide to think they’re doing okay. 

About Erin Block
She/Her/Hers

Erin Block works as a librarian and lives in a cabin in Colorado where she hunts, fishes, forages, and gardens. Her writing has been published in CutBank Literary Journal, The Rumpus, Guernica and Gray's Sporting Journal, among others.