On Predation & Hiding.

A friend calls, her voice like one riverstone
rolling against the next, and she says
I sound breathless, and she asks
what are you doing 
so urgently
at 9:30am?

Because it's the truth, I holler STOP THAT
and then regularly say, The cat is an asshole
who's tormenting a tiny
nuthatch whose tail feathers

are all pulled out and I've got
to get him away from him.

She sends me off to do that: To rescue.
And all through the next COVID conference
call I've got an injured
nestling in the downy maroon
pocket
of my sweatshirt.

I am not sorry for what I've said-
the cat is an asshole,
but I'm sorry for predators,
who know not why they do.
The nuthatch jabs

his dainty rapier
bill into my thumb.

I find an empty Priority Mail box,
line it with tissue,
prepare to imprison this barely-fledged
creature,

and instead he flaps damaged wings
just once, falls, cries out
pitti-caw-caw, 
then disappears behind the fridge.

The damned fridge is old, unwieldy.
I know-I move it out, then back, then out again
trying to find the nuthatch

and cannot. An old dryer vent
hole appears.

All day I am tormented
thinking Surely, he's died. One cannot hide
in so much refuse and dust.

Surely he has suffocated, and will soon turn
to bone.

For how could something so tired,
so tiny, survive both predation and hiding?

I sweep mouse dung up,
move the fridge back again.

Behind it, the dryer vent
leads to outside.