Fledgling

A tiny bird appears at the hole
of his house, as a waxing
crescent moon appears at its appointed hour.

We in the human house behind
have witnessed his parents prepare
for this arrival flying in, flying out.

And now this singular eye
as it first sees the dark become
green become sky

through the hole my son helped
his father carve. Today he wrote
his first set of recognizable words:

Mama Love. The letters sweep
in erratic flight across the page,
their lines intersect like leaves.

We heard his baby sounds at night
become vowels become letters sung
out of the order of their alphabet,

become questions made of words
strung together in a line like a trapeze.
This bird will begin to answer

the question tugging at its wing
when we are not watching the door,
a round opening with nothing to close.

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Christine Poreba is a New Yorker who lived for more than a decade in North Florida and now lives in Chicagoland. Her book, Rough Knowledge, won the Philip Levine Prize and her manuscript, This Eye is for Seeing Stars, won the 2023 Orison Poetry Prize and will be published in 2025. Her poems have appeared in several anthologies and numerous journals, including Barrow Street, The Southern Review, Cimarron Review, Puerto del Sol, and The Sun.