Matthew Thorburn

A dab of gray in the green of that wild shrub, a catbird repeats his cat-like mewl, bickering with a big grackle perched above. The grackle croaks back then turns his purple-black head away. I keep still, kneeling in the lilies I meant to thin out. Quiet, quiet— don’t want to startle them off, can’t see the catbird now

but he’s not finished with his say. Soon the grackle starts in again too and I hear my great-aunts, their low sandpapery voices echoing in the blue kitchen, their housecoats, in heaven. That continual back and forth, their on and on that must still trundle on in some eternal morning: “Surely you will recall ….” “Well, yes, but ….” “I suppose, although ….” One starts, one stops. One coughs, considers, starts again. I’m a child looking up from cool linoleum, until the catbird zips off, the grackle flaps away.