Cardinal

 By Katherine Gotthardt
  
 Mornings, I want to write deeply,
 delve into the beak of the cardinal by my window,
 pull his routine song into my poem,
 make something more beautiful than myself. 
      But it doesn’t happen.
  
 Instead, the day gets swallowed, 
 sits in a full belly where hours and years swell
 into reminders we don’t get to do 
 half of what we want to do,
 a quarter of what we need to do,
 perhaps none of what we dream to do.
      And I am sad. 
  
 See I have aspirations,
 hopes that hitchhike on wings,
 land on high branches,
 build nests among spring leaves and breezes,
 strain to touch the sky’s thin edges –
 indeed, I’d be able to fly 
 whenever mood or need arises. 
      But mostly, I remain grounded.
  
 So for now I borrow a feather, 
 dip it in red ink and affirmations,
 lower that sharp tip 
 to a page in a mulberry notebook, 
 quill my words in cursive:
 “Still,” it says,
      “I live.”