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57¢ Worth of Glory

I have been buying 57¢ suet cakes:
leftover lard scraps with leftover 
nuggets of nuts or berries or gristle.
One of the feeders is a metal cage
about a foot high, and half as wide.


We also get our 57¢ worth of greasy window.
Birds that like suet like to hammer at it, 
and to flick their heads to clear their bills.
"Pfeu!", they say.  "That was a dead skunk!"


"Oh, my sweet Jesus!", I called to Mari,
"Look at that beauty!"  She did.
I moved.  It flew away.  We said,
"Who was that red-crested peckerwood?"


Glory happens!  In a universe
that tries everything, randomly, 
there will be dead-ends, and drabness,
but there will be, also, glorious extensions
of things that work, and cause the heart
of a secular soul to say, "Oh, my sweet
Jesus!", maybe because Jesus was
a peckerwood, too:  something glorious
in a world filled with ordinary color.


We have orioles, and hummingbirds and doves
and cardinals and rose-breasted grosbeaks at our feeders,
but we peckerwoods have to hang together.  

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