First Early Mornings Together

Waking up over the candy store together
We hear birds waking up below the sill
And slowly recognize ourselves, the weather,
The time, and the birds that rustle there until

Down to the street as fog and quiet lift
The pigeons from the wrinkled awning flutter
To reconnoiter, mutter, stare and shift
Pecking by ones or twos the rainbowed gutter.




"First Early Mornings Together," from The Figured Wheel: New and Collected Poems, 1966–1996 by Robert Pinsky. Copyright © 1996 by Robert Pinsky. Reprinted with the permission of Farrar, Straus and Giroux.