"Washing the Breakfast Dishes, I decide"

What noun
would you want
spoken on your skin
your whole life through?
-Mark Doty

Wren. I considered
open-mouthed words - love,
honor, even melancholy
for the sound of it -
afraid I might waste
this chance, like the one wish.
Then I remembered last Thursday's
small brown bird on the rail,
its head tilted back
in what I imagined sudden joy,
though I know its trill,
sweet and full,
rose from the breast of instinct,
the throat of an ordinary day.


(c) Susan Meyers, Keep and Give Away