Nest

I found it near that corner where
some Septembers a skinny apple tree
hangs fruit the size of stoplights,
the nest itself a palmful,
fallen intact, the bottom so thin
I'd be thinking about
the faith of scarlet tanagers
had I looked up through it
and counted four blue-green eggs
mottled brown, and the nest itself
like a round of serendipity
aspiring to elegance,
tan grasses and a touch of dander
bound with darker rootlets
and forbs, meaning any herbs
that aren't grass or grasslike,
another collective name for weeds
like dogshade and rattlebox,
the nest itself hinting toward
the centrifugal, the way things go
when a tree one morning spins
its contents outward.

Illustration by Blair Thornley