Nests

By Carlene Gadapee

I’ve never seen a blue jay’s nest.
That thought startled me. My in-town 
life brings me far too close to other nests: 

paper wasps, mostly, and people. I watch 
finches dart and complain at the feeders.
Robins, after bouncing briefly on a branch,

wing off to another perch. But these jays, 
where do they live? Loud and brazen blue 
and gray denizens of hedgerows, they call 

for rain and for each other, like old-time 
movie housewives, hollering to children 
out of tired tenement windows, shaking out 
patchwork quilts and gossip in equal measure.

I’m like little Anthony in the 1970s spaghetti
commercial, like it’s Wednesday, like dinner’s 
ready, like someone is calling me from playing 
with friends down the street, calling me home.

___

Carlene M. Gadapee’s poems and poetry reviews have been published by or are forthcoming in Waterwheel Review, Smoky Quartz, Allium, Inkwell, Vox Populi, MicroLit Almanac, and elsewhere. Her chapbook, What to Keep, will be released by Finishing Line Press in early 2025. She lives with her husband in northern New Hampshire.