Your nest empty,
You must have been after them all
For yourself.

It must have seemed so urgent–
A whole season of tasting sweetness
To regurgitate it
For others–
And now all these berries still ripe, 
Syrupy on the bush.

Yesterday, I saw two others give up–
Pecking though the net once or twice–
Accepting this was no longer for them, but not
You.

You persisted,
Fighting through the barriers
Until the strings, double-netted,
Strangled you, still open-beaked

And grasping.

As I freed you
And lowered your limp feathers
With a handful of blueberries,
I felt the breeze of a wing-beat–
My own pulsing heart.