Perhaps this poem….

opens the red and orange berries

___of the bittersweet vine to cedar waxwings

______that pluck and pass as they line up in a row

spills over its margins like the rose-breasted

___grosbeak’s stream of whistles that crowd

______the cedar waxwings off the vine

huddles alone in a dying pine quiet

___except for the hulk of the ivory-billed woodpecker

______that doffs his flaming crest in vain and fades

Donna O’Connell-Gilmore, poet and psychotherapist, moved to Cape Cod In 2000 to focus more seriously on poetry. She published the chapbook Africa Is the Mother Who Lies in the Grass in 2015 (Sandheap Press). Donna’s poetry has appeared in Willow Springs, Blueline, The Hopper, Off the Coast, and Glassworks.