Produced by Dennis Camire

This week’s poem is by Ruth Guillard of Bowdoinham.

ROBINS IN WINTER

By Ruth Guillard

I met a man today who talked
animatedly about the flock
of robins he had seen, jumping
chirping, swinging on bare branches.
Everyone knows, he said,
robins are a sign of spring.
I did not tell him
that they stay all winter.
It’s just that he hadn’t noticed.
He hadn’t noticed because
he didn’t go where they hide…
in the corners of the barn, inside
hedgerows and the sheltering woods,
all the secret, silent places
he never bothered to enter.
Now the robins had come to him
at the edge of his lawn, where the first
low thickets mark the beginning
of the forest. Tomorrow
he may venture in more deeply,
listen for a slight rustling
under the privets, sit quietly
in the vastness of a barn
whose rafters rise aloft
like a cathedral.

Dennis Camire can be reached at dcamire@cmcc.edu