What the Birds Taught Me by Nico Martinez Nocito
26 lines
Issue 8, Summer 2025
I learned gentleness from beneath a vulture’s wing,
my cotton pad daubing at blood and scratches
left by a fox’s enterprising claws.
I learned how to sing from a sparrow’s beak,
a steel prosthetic to replace its old and crumpled one.
Its small, gentle body relaxed into me,
trusting,
and when it opened its newfound beak and sang again,
I learned what joy was too.
I learned inner peace from a starling,
a big, brutish bird whose roughened cries
woke me from a restless sleep.
He’d lost an eye and half a leg,
and though I guessed at his pain, he revealed none of it.
He released only the smallest cry
as I replaced his missing eye with a mechanical one,
and when I roused him, he stretched his wings and flew away,
unbothered by his detour,
ready to once more
make the world his own.
The birds come to me in disarray:
tattered wings, broken limbs.
They flock into the city and land within my garden of an apartment—
always recognizing my spot of green
within the green, green city—
and each one teaches me.
