Feeding the birds
Little boy Baxter wants us to feed the birds.
He tells me so with just the one word
“Birds!’
He grips the bread tightly
and proceeds to break it into
ever smaller pieces.
We are in this together.
My job is to throw the bread up to the raised plateau
where the wax-eyes, sparrows and chaffinches
swoop down from the old plum tree
and what’s left of the olive.
This exercise knows no end.
He breaks the bread into large pieces at first
and then, all concentration,
he breaks what’s left again and again
and passes it to me very carefully for dispatch
until all the birds are fed
and we are face to face
and he is smiling at me
from beneath a tumble of unruly blond hair
and together we are trying to separate the last crumb
to make of it
two crumbs,
to make this communion
go on forever.
– Michael Fitzsimons