The Nuthatch Nest

The Nuthatch’s Nest

Meet me near the nuthatch’ nest,

for who shall know but you and I

just where this creeping creature built

her home away from prying eye?

Who else has listened to her call.

Who else has spotted, as they stood

absorbing the sweet solitude,

in that quiet clearing in the wood,

that flitting flash of peach and grey,

that darting streak, that fluting cry,

whose hearts rejoiced to spy her

momentary rest, but you and I?

Who else had tied, on trunks and branches,

squirrel-proofed tubes of wood and wire,

who mended, tended, debated, worried,

discussed and fussed, and moved them higher?

who else had trudged, with earnest wish,

with nuts in rucksacks, every week?

Who scrambled and scrabbled to keep them filled,

to tempt the searching nuthatch beak?

Who spotted, one day, as the leaves

 blown by a breeze out off the way,

a hole in a trunk, and, as we watched,

an eye-stripe and a flash of grey.

Who watched to see, laboriously crafted,

from what was a jagged hole before,

with beakfuls of mud, on many trips

a perfectly circular front door?

Who but we wait, like anxious fathers,

helplessly hoping that all will be well

for those nuthatch eggs we hope have been laid,

for the first beak to break through the delicate shell.

A question for those who dare to assume

that we are in any way obsessed

with this elusive blue-grey bird-

Have you ever seen a nuthatch’ nest?