A white-crowned sparrow
plucks grubs from a deer skull.

From bone to nest, from nest
to bone as morning blooms

with lilac light, the sparrow flies
to feed her naked hatchlings.

In this way the dead doe
(a winter kill)

by way of the mother’s beak
shares her squirming thoughts

with the blind and flightless:
Take, eat my memory

of the woods. Swallow my swift
witness of this earth. Carry

with your new wings this call:
The forest floor receives us all.

This article appears in September 2024.

Jim Richards’s work has appeared in The Atlantic, Poetry Northwest and Prairie Schooner, among other publications. His poetry collection, Swift Witness, is forthcoming in 2025. He lives in southeastern Idaho.