The Baby Bird

Photo by Arturo Alvarez on Unsplash

Did your parents tell you not to touch baby animals because our human smell would make them outcasts? Mine did. And even now I hesitate when I have the impulse to reach out and hold something natural.

They said never touch the baby bird —

Our smell will cling to it and

their mothers would reject them and

they will starve.

They will die.

Is this how we learned

our bodies are contaminated?

When the deepest desire of our tender child hearts —

to hold a soft thing close to our chest,

to feel a breath and a heartbeat in our hands —

became forbidden.

We continued to grow in this body,

the one we know to be dangerous.

We gave up on tender things,

on sharing breath and heartbeat,

on whispering love directly into nature’s open ears.