An ode to a father’s benevolence and spirit that acts as celebration of the wondrous creatures who visited his feeder…
by: Janet R. Kirchheimer
On the back porch, my father kept two feeders. He’d also put out small pieces of bread each morning on the railing. The birds had competition. Hanging upside down, the squirrels figured out how to get seeds from the feeders. And there was one that would rap its tail on the door for peanut butter on bread that my father would bring out. Once, he sent me a picture of his squirrel. On the back he wrote, “my friend.”
But his birds were special. A blue jay would arrive each morning after sunrise, wait on the lawn for my father to open the door. If he wasn’t on time, there was loud squawking until he threw pieces of bread, and the blue jay would take enough in its beak to feed on during the day. Soon others came — vesper, white-throated, and savannah sparrows, red-winged blackbirds, northern cardinals, an occasional hummingbird, slate-colored juncos, and crows so big you could put a saddle on them and ride away.
One morning, he called to tell me about a robin that came with its young, teaching them how to take seed from the feeders. Another time, it was a fledgling, red-bellied woodpecker. “His colors are so clean, so bright, he looks like he’s just been painted.”
Each March, he would watch for the black-billed cuckoos who brought the spring with them. One day he told me how, when he was a boy, the swallows would come back each spring, nesting in his family’s cow barn where it was warm, flying in and out looking for food for their young. In the summer, he sat in his chair on the porch and waited for the birds who were bold enough to come to the feeder while he was there. My father watched from his seat at the kitchen table each winter, leaving suet cakes in metal holders to give the birds energy. All seemed right in my father’s world.
Now, I’m the one feeding the blue jays and occasional crows that come to my terrace. Every morning, I listen for the squawking, usually around 6:00 am, and put out shelled peanuts, bread, and some water.
The evening before the anniversary of his passing, something told me to leave bread on the terrace table, rather than in the feeder, as if to invite the birds for a meal. When I woke up the next morning, I heard some blue jays squawking, looked out the window, and saw one taking bread in its beak. Then from the clouded early sky, I heard a screeching, a screeching I’ve never heard before, loud and long and otherworldly in its tone. It was my father; I knew it right away.
It is said that blue jays can recognize people, those who care for them and those who don’t. I’m hoping the birds who come to take food know it’s me, that I’m the one continuing my father’s tradition. And that I feed them before I feed myself as he taught me to do.
My father fed all his birds, delighted in their colors and shapes, smiling at the way they ate and spat out some of the seeds. Late in summer afternoons, the sparrows would fly off to sleep in the forsythia bush. He swept the porch as it turned towards evening, then sat in his chair listening to the crows perched on the roof call to one another.
Janet R. Kirchheimer is the author of How to Spot One of Us, poems about the Holocaust and her family (Clal, 2007) and Seduction: Out of Eden, a modern retelling of the Creation story, co-authored with Jaclyn Piudik (Kelsay, 2022). She is the producer of the award-winning film AFTER: Poetry Destroys Silence, a cinematic performance documentary in which contemporary poets, both Jewish and non-Jewish, confront the Holocaust and discuss the responsibility to respond, www.after.film. AFTER, named one of the best films of 2024 by Rogerebert.com, won Best Feature Documentary at the 2025 Montreal Independent Film Festival. The film is streaming on Amazon and on GrasshopperFilm.com. A Pushcart Prize nominee, Janet is a winner of the 2025 Lincoln Poetry Prize. Her work has appeared in many journals including Atlanta Review, Potomac Review, Limestone, Connecticut Review, Kalliope, Mudfish, Common Ground Review, as wells as several online journals and anthologies, including The Poet’s Quest for God. Kirchheimer’s featured essays include “Make Your Selection, Please,” for the Jewish Telegraphic Agency (JTA), and “Kristallnacht: How Will We Remember?” for The New York Jewish Week, and “Sometimes You Have To Walk Through The Door, Even If There Is Blood On It” for The Wisdom Daily. Several poems have been translated into Russian, and she has given bilingual readings with a Russian-speaking poet at The New York City Public Library. Her chapter, At the Water’s Edge: Poetry and the Holocaust appeared in The Handbook of Psychoanalytic Holocaust Studies (Routledge, 2019). Kirchheimer teaches creative writing/memoir and is a writing coach and editor. www.janetkworks.com
