Without Her

This poem won gold in a contest about loss, from a man's point of view..

Without Her
Again this morning, they gather
in the high white pines
and along the back clothes line.
The birds watch the window, waiting.
The empty bird feeder swings in the wind.
I watch them from my seat on the front porch.
They have no interest in me,
it is her they are waiting for.
She use to fill the bird feeder every morning,
no matter the weather.
The morning doves approach me first
hopping across the boards of the porch,
heads held sideways asking perhaps,
"what has happened to that old woman?"
I ignore the chatter and sip my weak coffee,
still after a month of trying it doesn’t have
the punch of the stuff she use to make.
I find it strange that the smallest things
are what I find hardest to bare without her.
I use to take for granted all the clean socks
and underwear that use to appear like magic every day.
A chickadee cries hauntingly from the pine tree.
I ignore the call and continue to sip my almost cold brew.
Just as I am ready to go inside I see it,
the flash of red fluttering above the trees.
Every year my wife would wait for them to come.
Some years they never were seen.
Her favorite bird, perhaps because they were so rare.
My heart aches in my chest, wishing she was here to enjoy this.
I think about the empty feeder
and the bag of feed wasting away in the porch.
A female cardinal joins her mate on the tree.
Two cardinals now that is a rare sight.
With tears on my cheeks I go into the porch to retrieve the birdseed.
I can feel my wife's light laugh drifting on the wind
as I walk back to the pine trees and fill the feeder.