Announcement

Rose-breasted grosbeak, feeder visitor,
it’s mother’s day and I’m marrying and adopting
in one giant late-middle-age swoop.
Can your male spring plumage top that?
Yours is a rare beauty, rarely encountered
by guests who assemble on the porch.
Mine is a concocted, complicated adornment,
catching others in social contracts
they might have sidestepped indefinitely.
And your sudden appearance makes me
enormously happy because I know
we have attracted you from the woods
without intending to entrap.

Ellen Foos

Ellen Foos

Ellen Foos is a senior production editor for Princeton University Press. She is the founder and publisher of Ragged Sky Press and was the recipient of a fellowship to the MacDowell Colony and the Verm