Cordelia Stanwood’s Black-Throated Green Nest
First, they placed small curls of birch bark on a sticky base
of spider web, spanning a balsam fir’s fork, each tine a brace
to support the nest. Then they built up the bottom across
this vee with bits of grass, cedar bark, and usnea moss.
The female broke often to sit and rotate, pressing down
the pile with the bowl of her breast, until only her beak
and tail rose above the rim of the nest which, made of fine twigs,
was well-turned and narrower than the rest of the cup.
On the fourth day of building, Cordelia Stanwood climbed up,
and with her fingertips touched the nest’s soft inside—pig’s
and horse’s and rabbit’s hair, woven into a thick, brown
felt. She saw grass in the walls, as she leaned over to peek,
packing the space between inside and out. It took five days,
she wrote Arthur Bent, to make this perfect harmony in grays.
Pudding House published a chapbook of Charles Weld’s poems, Country I Would Settle In, in 2004, and Kattywompus Press published a chapbook, Who Cooks For You?, in 2012. Partially retired, he’s worked for a non-profit agency treating youth that face mental health challenges in the Finger Lakes region of upstate New York.