They come for the black-oil
sunflower seeds and the baked
eggshells and the fruit.
They come for the cracked corn
and suet cakes and peanut butter.
They sing and tweet and flutter
and when they spot Marion’s
bleached blonde hair scuttling
across the dew drenched grass,
her musical fingers tossing
the White Proso Millet seeds
onto the open air like a
high-spirited orchestra conductor,
the trees croon louder and
the foliage rumba,
and the lawn is blanketed
with the tuneful duets
of the mourning doves
and the juncos and the fox sparrows.
Marion once told me
that she is going to teach me
her feeding technique.
I pray Marion never leaves me,
because if she does I know
the birds will no longer come.
Shay Cook earned her Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing from National University and a Bachelor’s in English from the University of Phoenix. She is the recipient of the Hillsborough County Lit Wit Poetry Contest, Winner of the Tampa Tribune Letter of the Day, and author of a collected work of poems entitled “Black Silk.” Her poem “Playing Dress” up was recently published in the July 2016 Issue of Mother’s Always Write Magazine and her poem “Denial” was published in the July 2016 issue of Silver Birch Press Magazines. Shay’s poems “The Problem with Getting Flowers” and “By Then” have been chosen for publication in “The Narcissist Playbook Anthology,” a project of Nutshell Media Group, scheduled for publication in 2017. Shay is currently working on her second book of poetry, “A Pale Shade of Color.” In her spare time she hosts creative writing workshops and does poetry readings. Shay makes her home in beautiful Tampa, Florida.
