I wake up to a bird calling cheat, cheat, cheat.
What bird are you and whom do you call?
You caught me sleeping
with the windows open.
What sounds like footsteps in the woods—
squirrels scurrying through dead leaves.
Things are not what they seem.
When will new leaves arrive?
There is no one here.
The greening has begun—
Did I leave you? Say, no
more, no more.
What season is it? What sky dare
be so blue? And why those words?
Spring comes despite you
little cheat. Nest builder. Nest builder.
Where are you? Your hungry ones are coming
shrouded in shell. Speak up. Tell.
Cindy Veach is the author of Her Kind (CavanKerry Press, forthcoming), Gloved Against Blood (CavanKerry Press), named a finalist for the Paterson Poetry Prize and a ‘Must Read’ by The Massachusetts Center for the Book, and the chapbook, Innocents (Nixes Mate). Her poems have appeared in the Academy of American Poets Poem-a-Day Series, AGNI, Prairie Schooner, Poet Lore, Michigan Quarterly Review, Diode and elsewhere. She received the Phillip Booth Poetry Prize and the Samuel Allen Washington Prize. Cindy is co-poetry editor of Mom Egg Review.
