Knowing When to Close an Open Mouth

From the mud nest hanging at the edge of the eaves, the chicks poke out their heads and open their mouths. Yellow beaks gape wide toward the sky. Standing beneath them, I found myself looking up for a long time. At some point I had stopped waiting for anything, and grown used to simply rising when morning came and lying down when the sun set. But seeing those small lives throw their whole bodies open, calling for something, I wonder if I was once like that too. Closing a mouth that had forgotten what it called for, I went back inside the house. But when do those chicks learn to close those gaping mouths, I wonder. Last evening, watching the laundry outside the window fluttering in the wind, I found myself thinking about that. By the time the chicks close their mouths, they must be learning to swallow the insects their mother brings. And even so, all evening long, watching the rippling laundry, I practiced swallowing something on my own. At dawn the laundry began to dry. There was a moment when the wet cloth lay down meekly in the wind, once, and after that nothing stirred. Beneath the eaves the chicks were still asleep, and the morning air was seeping in between their open beaks.