I eye the headless robin
half-hidden behind the fence board
bodiless when it rises
to perch legs-only on a spot
of manure; a smallest earth.

There are miracles here,
scattered clumps of them
among clustered sprouts
of spring grass, higher
where last year’s droppings dried
and sank;

watch long enough
and a field’s worth
will vibrate and bounce
like those old jumping beans.

You wouldn’t think they’d move
any way but down

yet in a sound of great washing
like upward rain
up they all go as winged shit
or a flock of swallows –

one miracle
made of many
whose fate, like ours,
is to flutter up into the branches
and become leaves.

Hiatt O’Connor has received multiple honors for his poems, including the Miriam T. & Jude Pfister prize from the Academy of American Poets. He is published in The PRISM, The Allegheny Review, Tiny Seed Literary Journal, and by the Academy of American Poets. He lives and works on his Maryland farm.