Hannah Silverstein

Shapeshifters

The goldfinches rise
from the goldenrod

as if the field had taken wing
from flowers, discarding
a life of dirt and crawling things

for sky, if only as far
as a branch on the gray
wetland snag—
what might have been

a tall birch, once, or a maple,
before beavers turned the land
to marsh, before the marsh
filled with sediment and dried,

before the goldenrod took root
in the thistle scrubland where now
goldfinches build their nests

and cast their yellow fledglings
to the wind like seeds.

Hannah Silverstein lives in Vermont, but her poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Terroir Review, The Ekphrastic Review, SWWIM Every Day, and The New Guard.