Black capped chickadee drops down,

beak seeks seed on ground.

Squirrel too will ravage soon,

neither smug in frantic daily labor

in the pitiless cold,

a quick and sacred hunger

I take you in,

suspending pity or thought,

silent before your need

to watch with hungry eyes, though

we lack vision through a glass.

Life is too long, too slow to

rush to seize and it drops us

down to earth in an instant.

The remedy must then come

one seed at a time.

Virginia Nees-Hatlen of Orono is an associate professor of English and director of the Center for Teaching Excellence at the University of Maine.