In the Kelvingrove Museum, Edinburgh
by Sara Eddy
Stitched birds hide on a side panel
next to a wall, hatchlings sewn
into a glinty gold nest, mouths
open over 100 years, worm-waiting.
I show them to a little girl
who begins an inspiration dance,
little shoulders and hips rocking,
chestnut braids thrumming like flight.
She is German, and we have no words
for each other, but her dance
means we are all little birds,
we are in a nest together and there is joy.
next to a wall, hatchlings sewn
into a glinty gold nest, mouths
open over 100 years, worm-waiting.
I show them to a little girl
who begins an inspiration dance,
little shoulders and hips rocking,
chestnut braids thrumming like flight.
She is German, and we have no words
for each other, but her dance
means we are all little birds,
we are in a nest together and there is joy.
Sara Eddy’s second full-length poetry collection, How to Wash a Rabbit, is forthcoming from Cornerstone Press. She is also author of Ordinary Fissures (2024), and two chapbooks: Full Mouth (2020), and Tell the Bees (2019). Her poems have appeared in many online and print journals, including Threepenny Review, Raleigh Review, Sky Island, and Baltimore Review, among others. She lives in Amherst, Massachusetts, in a house built by Emily Dickinson’s cousin.