Spell for Good Fortune

Wipe your windowsill clean
of desiccated insects hatched
from a dead poinsettia

with a folded fabric scrap
cut from your mother’s nightgown,
the one stitched through

with blue embroidery thread.
Summon a red-winged blackbird
with seed and suet, admire

the bright yellow slashes above
each scarlet shoulder patch,
the black glossy wink of its eye.

Most likely, no bird will show.
But by then you’ll know
that if you have a windowsill

and seed and fat, a mother
whose nightgown you possess—
the spell you seek was worked

like thread into your life
before you conjured up the bird
or spoke a single magic word.

*

Hayden Saunier is the author of six poetry collections, including most recently, Wheel. Her work has been awarded a Pushcart Prize, the Pablo Neruda, Rattle Poetry, and Gell Poetry Awards and published in One Art, Southern Poetry Review, The Sun, 32 Poems, Thrush, Virginia Quarterly Review, among many others.