Hayden Saunier

‍ ‍

What It Holds

in the cupped hand
of a nest fallen
from a
bluebird box

is a bird’s curled
skeleton, complete,
surrounded by a few

sky-blue scraps
of its old costume,
its beaked skull

a tiny plague mask,
the empty orbits
of its eye sockets

filled with the galactic
dark of the night sky
it lived beneath.

Hayden Saunier is the author of six poetry collections. Her work has been awarded a Pushcart Prize, Nimrod International’s Pablo Neruda Prize, the Rattle Poetry Prize and has been published in 32 Poems, Southern Poetry Review, The Sun, Thrush, and Virginia Quarterly Review as well as featured online on Poetry Daily, The Writer’s Almanac, Verse Daily, and Vox Populi. She is the founder and director of No River Twice, an interactive poetry reading.