Nest

It wasn’t until we got the Christmas tree into the house and up on the stand that our daughter discovered a small bird’s nest tucked among its needled branches. Amazing, that the nest had made it all the way from Nova Scotia on a truck mashed together with hundreds of other trees without being dislodged or crushed. And now it made the tree feel wilder, a balsam fir growing in our living room, as though at any moment a bird might flutter through the house and return to the nest. And yet, because we’d brought the tree indoors, we’d turned the nest into the first ornament. So we wound the tree with strings of lights, draped it with strands of red beads, and added the other ornaments, then dropped two small brass bells into the nest, like eggs containing music, and hung a painted goldfinch from the branch above, as if to keep them warm.