by Allen M. Price

They wake with the smell of morning dew,

With the sun shining anew.

Whistling rhythms as smooth as their glide.

Disturbing my focus as I write inside.

One after another like a band playing in sync

They converse with each other

But only they know what they speak.

Some tweet and some twitter

While the sun begins to glitter.

Their tongues grow louder the higher it climbs,

Forcing me to stop writing and go outside.

Tall and feathered the trees are where they stay.

A temporary hide they will reside in ‘til the season shies away.

“I’m trying to write,” I yell out across the way,

“So tone it down a little, and let me type my say.”

For it is no use, they listen no matter,

Just stares and glares that read don’t bother.

For the sun is whom they abide and whom they will follow

Until it turns and cools their tomorrow.

Allen M. Price was a finalist for the James A. Winn 2025 Michigan Quarterly Review Nonfiction Prize. He won Solstice Literary Magazine’s 2023 Michael Steinberg Nonfiction Prize, Blue Earth Review’s 2022 Flash Creative Nonfiction Contest, and Columbia Journal’s 2021 Winter Nonfiction Contest. He’s a four-time Pushcart Prize nominee. His work appears or is forthcoming in Roxane Gay’s The Audacity, The Missouri Review, Michigan Quarterly Review online, among others. He has an MA from Emerson College.