By Jack Stallins

When the morning
was martin purple
you rose and cooked
hummingbird dope.
The hummingbirds flew
so close to our heads.
We ducked, but they stained
our hair with their sweat.
They do not sing like martins.
But they come to us.

You put up
the martin box every fall.
But soon it will crumble
to splintered rot in the shed
as a grave sprouts
western Kentucky bluegrass.
Martins will visit when we don’t.

We walk to the garden,
pick squash and peppers.
You know what to pick,
how hot peppers glow
cigarette red at the tips.

You are going to leave me
like the martins in the spring.

~~~

Jack Stallins is a poet and fiction writer from Rome, Georgia. His work has recently appeared in Kentucky Monthly Magazine, the Connecticut River Review, and Molecule, and is forthcoming in the Scapegoat Review. He lives and works in Louisville, Kentucky.