Kevin Stoy

TO A HOUSE FINCH.

      for my brother

Such strong singing from such a little
bird, firm as a kettle’s whistling, his song
from the brick window sill stinging my ears
like an anxious alarm clock.  He’s cocking
his head now, red-browed and streaked
like the face of a Marine I’ve seen
in a magazine photo somewhere, his eye-
lid half blown off by a mortar shell,
the blood accumulating.  I wake facing
east, the warm May sun on my pillow.
This morning, nothing on that sill,
the only assuring harmony all
of the sounds coming alive between us
in the narrowing space of his approach.

Kevin Stoy currently resides in Fairfax, Virginia, where he's in his second year of work in the MFA program at George Mason University. His poems have been published in the SNReview and are forthcoming in Triplopia and Evening of Odds.