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What We Thought Was Ours
Elizabeth Brulé Farrell

We tied netting over the bushes,
then a mesh canopy nailed on a wooden frame
to mark the boundary of where the birds
may not go. They flew in anyway.

Fluttering their wings in confusion
with blueberry in their beak, sometimes
they made it back to the free sky,
and other times their wings were caught.

We took pity and brought our fingers
to pry them loose, or saw too late
the silent hanging body and cut away the mesh
to release what remained of feather and bone.

We had no doubt we needed to dismantle
the barrier to protect what we thought was ours,
as the birds filled their beaks and we brought bowls,
seeing that there was plenty for us all.

—
Elizabeth Brulé Farrell has been an advertising copywriter in Chicago, a teacher, and a writer-in-residence in public school systems in Massachusetts. Her poems have been published in The Paterson Literary Review, Poetry East, Except for Love: New England Poets Inspired by Donald Hall, The Comstock Review, Pilgrimage, Evening Street Review, Stronger Than Fear, and more. She has been the recipient of the Louise Bogan Memorial Award for Poetry.

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