Jane Hirshfield (1953- ), from Of Gravity and Angels (Middleton, CT: Weslyan University Press, 1988).

A woman tells me

the story of a small wild bird

beautiful on her window sill, dead three days.

How her daughter came suddenly running,

"It's moving, Mommy, he's alive."

And when she went, it was.

The emerald wing-feathers stirred, the throat

seemed to beat again with the pulse.

Closer then, she saw how the true life lifted

under the wings. Turned her face

so her daughter would not see, though she would see.