Grandma's Chickadees

I have my own picture window now, complete with bird feeder.

Grandma fed her chickadees

religiously, for years.  Filling 

a rusted coffee can with sunflower 

seeds, she loaded the feeder outside 

her big picture window, daily.

Seated with binoculars and bird book in hand, 

she watched the window like a big screen TV.

A .22 leaned casually against the window frame.  

She slipped its nose out occasionally, firing a round 

into marauding Blue Jays and other greedy types.

Her letters to me, in shaky script, described 

birds she saw and bears; often

mother bears moving through the old

orchard on their way to the river

with cubs in tow.  

She stopped shooting the rifle, she said,

after she accidentally shot a hole in the floor.  

When a bold bear came and stood outside the window

making eye contact with her, she also stopped feeding the birds. 

I wanted her to feed them anyway,

to stand her petite frame in the wide

window, binoculars in one hand and riffle

in the other, like a sharp shooter in the WWII

movies Grandpa and I watched in her

living room.  I wanted food for the birds,

which were food for her.  I wanted her to keep

feeding them.  

Now I walk my own property

toting bags of oiled, black sunflower seeds. 

One by one I lower, fill, and rehang feeders.  

I watch dumpy doves, dapper cardinals, bright yellow finches 

and the greedy squirrel who hangs upside-down by his back toes.

I lift my children to face the window, “Look! See!,” I say.  

We’re a long way from the mountains,

though I can see them in the distance.  

I don’t believe the bears will find me here, 

but if they do, maybe I’ll tell them

about my Grandmother – her binoculars and gun,

her happy, well-fed chickadees.