Photo by Melanie Ruuska
Frugality
She lives like the robin
who frequents the feeder
outside my bedroom window,
who gathers wisps of dead grass
in her beak like a bobber,
who weaves her nest with cast-offs of dead
leaves, dead twigs, dead
Starburst wrappers blown in
from the gas station parking
lot across the street.
She lives like the robin,
stuffs old shoppers in the walls for insulation,
boils a broccoli stalk into soup stock,
cuts each pill off a sweater
to make it last through winter,
doesn’t own a garbage can,
shares her apple core, corn cob,
orange peel with the chipmunk
who pops out of the drain pipe
where he hordes his chest of seeds.
– Esther Pearson