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Gary Metras’s 10th poetry book, Counting Bricks, was just published by Dos Madres Press. His essays, reviews, and chiefly poems have appeared in hundreds of periodicals since the 1970s, including Chiron Review, English Journal, Ibbetson Street, Poetry, Poetry East, and Yankee. He has worked as tobacco picker, short order cook, mason tender, air traffic controller (U.S. Air Force), book store manager, high school English teacher, and college writing instructor. He fly fishes the rivers and streams of western Massachusetts for recreation and inspiration.

Gary Metras

FOR THE BIRDS

A house sparrow sits atop
the wooden cross bar of the clothesline pole
where a wren house is attached.
The wren house is empty.
The sparrow sits there under the sun, the clouds, the rain.
The sparrow sits there, songless, alone, all this month, waiting.
He flies to the house gutter, sits there a while.
Flies atop the metal shepherd’s hook by the deck
where hangs a hummingbird feeder.
Sometimes the sparrow watches a hummingbird feed.
Sometimes the sparrow chases away the hummingbird,
the way he fought the wrens for the wren house.
The sparrow tried, again and again,
to enter the wren house, but doesn’t fit in the door.
Now the sparrow just sits there, waiting.
Some days a wren song fills the distance.
The sparrow doesn’t sing anymore. He sits there, alone.
Perhaps the wren house should be removed,
placed on a shelf in the storage shed to wait another year.

— Gary Metras

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