No Sanctuary by Richard Meyer

No Sanctuary

This January sky blue as June
doesn’t move the sparrows.
They hunker down, little gargoyles
braced against the wind,
feather-puffed and patient,
doing gray penance
in a snow-stuccoed hedge.

by Richard Meyer, first published in the Alabama Literary Review.

Editor’s Note: I am inordinately fond of birds. There is no hedge in this photo, but this particular poem evokes the apartment block of sparrows in the hedges that surround my parents’ yard, where scores of them flock and hunker down in the winter.

Photo by Christine Klocek-Lim — white-throated sparrow