I watch her mothering.

Her nest at the top of our tallest porch pillar is even with my bedroom window.

She carefully prepared for the arrival of her young and now, at a time soon come, she readies for their leaving.

Is it easier, I wonder, for bird-mothers?

I watch her chirp and flutter about, but for all this outward cheerfulness, I believe she is sad.  See how she peers anxiously at her teetering babes?  Holding back even as she lets go.

I know so well this holding back and letting go and the hurting that is surely there beneath the feathers of her tiny chest.

She mothered well, hovering protectingly, until each wetted wad of wing arched with strength enough to safely leave.

Yes, she taught them to be free of her, but how now to free herself of them?

They are eager to leave. It is right, of course, this eagerness and time for their adventuring, but even so she droops a little and her sheen is less in the bright orange sun.

She knew they would leave with a sureness borne of her own flight from another nest when she was just as young and eager.

She cautions with last minute chirps they do not hear, poor little mother, delaying them the only way she can and then for such a little.

She misses them even before they leave and knows they will not return -- not really return -- not ever.

They will fly past, even light at tip-edge but poised always to leave again and this is not returning.  Now it is a loved, familiar place, but soon it will be a twig and thread of memory with "home" somewhere else.

They so not know this but I am sure she does.  Again the lights go out of her and her chirp is more a croon of early loneliness.

The good mother she is, she would not hold them if she could -- their going is just as much a part of life as their coming.  The last part is much harder than the first, with greater pain than birthing.

Her young, in their excitement, do not see the shadow nor hear the different sound.

Her usual perky chirp is back now and busy-sounding:

"Good-bye... God bless... take care..." These things I said, with smile as bright as her call.  Is she saying them?

Mother-birds being mothers after all -- the words are probably the same.

Her little ones are gone.  Her little ones, not little ones anymore, have flown beyond my eye to follow.  She watches still as is the air that moved to take them from her will bring them back.  It does not.  She turns back to the emptied nest, searching for the babies near and needing, but that time is gone and there is only dull-colored thread and worn twig to remind.  Her chirp is silent.  No need now for gay pretense or lifted wing.  She is alone and all the loneliness can show.

Soon she will wonder, as even now I wonder and all mothers must sometimes wonder, was it ever?  Did it really happen?  Were they even hers -- so little and warm and needing -- or was it all the most perfect dream a heart could design?

Real or imagined, dreamed or not, a beautiful thing happened to her.  Listen... it is there in her song.