A Milk Jug Birdhouse, poem by Helen Losse

A Milk Jug Birdhouse

My mind rejects
what my eyes can see. A girl—
using a phone book for a booster seat—
sits at a table in the yard, beside

an abandoned clothes dryer. She’s
carving a birdhouse from an empty milk carton.
A suit of armor and a plastic pineapple
are under a longleaf pine, where drops of rosin

glue sword to fruit. The fields nearby [...]