It’s not the first time one of two wrens that haunt my front porch has broken free of her partner to experience what lies on the other side of my threshold. Should I consider her behavior a prescient sign, for good or for bad? I watch her flit from one side of my living room to another, pausing occasionally to perch on a few landmarks. Like the lampshade that adorns a bronzed figurine of a knight dressed in a miniature suit of armor my mother treasured. Or the sentinel outpost of my late husband’s pine coat rack I now use to display a collection of my favorite scarves and handbags. Or the narrow ledge of a gilded frame setting off the watercolor print of a blood-red amaryllis I picked up for a song at a local thrift store. How curious it seems for such a small bird to be capable of calling out the need for each voice to be heard and remembered.

election watch
the hopeful chirping of
like-minded spirits

Bio: Margaret Dornaus