When I walked to get the Saturday paper I found
a nest blown out of the hedge by last night’s gale
lying there small but undamaged on the path.
The paper had a Cop 27 special. On the front page
was the earth seen from space with its cloud wisps
circling soft white over the blue of its roundness.
The nest so circular too, wispy sheep’s wool woven
into the complexity of its making, swirling round it,
and smoothing that cup for eggs just two inches wide.
Last chance the caption for the earth picture. How come
its most evolved creatures are so destructive, so blind
to the balance, the delicate circularity of its systems?
We of the fiddling fingers, clever opposable thumbs,
who, given the hundreds of items for a goldfinches’ nest,
and a hundred years, could no more have constructed
this circular cradle than we could spin straw into gold.
