1.
Every summer baby birds find me.
Last year, I nursed a downy woodpecker
caught by a friend's cat, matted with oil.

As he grew, I encouraged him to climb
first fireplace logs then the big oak off the terrace.
He climbed so high, he scared himself,
called to me, over and over until
I coaxed him back down into my hands.

We practiced for days,
decreased feedings, increased tree time
until he was ready to leave.

I wonder if he's in the yard, hears my voice
like a fragment of a old song.

2.
My sister was so premature,
her digestive track was unformed.
Her first year was hushed voices,
private nurses coming and going.

I rarely saw her.
When I did, her skin looked scalded.
Her wails penetrated my room
across the hall where I sat
tight with anger, helpless.

3.
The other night,
two wispy, mottled babies huddled on the terrace,
close to the doorstep as if the house promised safety.

One lingers, wobbly legged and weaker.
Her sibling flew off after
a few days of food and rest.
When she hears me in the kitchen
she calls one note, shrill and high.
I mix water, dog kibble, a spoonful of soft meat
in the blender, push it through a funnel
for her to probe since she scorns the eyedropper,
burrows her thin beak between my fingers
to search for food.

I fear for her,
her appetite, her left wing which drags,
how she tires easily when she walks
then sits stationary for hours.

4.

"She's a dove," the vet said.
"with a wing too shattered to fix.
The law says you can't keep an animal
that can't be rehabilitated; I have to euthanize,
it's better than turning her loose
for some animal to eat."

Trying to console me, the vet tech added
the funnel was a good idea but the diet I fed her
would eventually have killed her
not predigested like the crop milk
doves hold in their throats for their young.

To the Anquillans, doves are ancestors
returned to guide and comfort.
She, not yet in her doveness,
was she the unformed child,
I dared not raise?

***

Leisha Douglas is a full time psychotherapist and yoga teacher who uses any spare time for writing. Her work has been published in the Gin Bender Poetry Review and The Writer. She is Media Editor for the The Hakomi Forum and directs the Katonah Poetry Series along with former Poet Laureate, Billy Collins.