The wren’s lament

Who knows why the fledglings died—
slowly—lingering even now in the nest
built in the clothespin bag hanging from
a nail on the porch while the frantic
parents sing forth their lament.

Was it the cramped contours of the bag
bristling with wooden pins, or our evening
presence on the porch, or the early laying
of six small eggs in this long cold spring
of frigid nights.

Why? And how can such liquid notes
purling like a mountain stream, be grief,
though watching the parents’ frenzied flight,
the silent nest, the seed, uneaten, falling
from the mother’s beak, how can they not?

This is not the poem I planned to write
when life cracked open the tiny speckled
eggs, but even now that joy remains within
the layered saddened heart as does the hope
that what has been will, surely, be again.