I found the plans for nestboxes in a gardening magazine. The plans were simple, the little houses constructed of rough cedar, a clever arrangement for opening the top (a sloping length of cedar board which would repel water like a shed roof), and there were several dimensions given, depending on the birds one wanted to attract. Some birds like an oval entry, some prefer a round one. Some like a perch whereas a perch can also be a means for larger birds to rob the contents of a nest. Some birds, like purple martins, will live in multi-family constructions but others, like swallows and finches, like privacy.

How did we ever do it? How did two poets with a small baby build a house when they had no experience beyond building book shelves out of pine?

We were hoping for violet green swallows. For years a pair had nested in a box nailed to the top of a post holding some of the wire which surrounded my vegetable garden. That box had been a gift to our children from an elderly friend. We’d see the pair swoop in come April, excitedly exploring our house and garden, then entering the painted box with little squeaks and chirps. They’d disappear, only to return a few weeks later. The male sat on the wire which conducted electricity into our house while the female carried nesting materials through the opening. Then the male brought in a few bits and pieces and spent time examining and adjusting the nest while the female sat on the wire. They’d take a break from this pattern for a few minutes of ecstatic flight, their wingtips touching in the air, their ardor breathtaking to those watching from the ground. Eventually both of them took up residence in the box. I thought of that aria sung by Magda in Puccini’s opera, La Rondine, its notes echoing the beauty of the flight, the courtship, their residency in the shelter of our garden. When the swallows first appeared, I’d play the opera as homage, Montserrat Caballe recounting her dream of a revelatory kiss.

I don’t know very much about the mating habits of swallows although I understand they are monogamous. Our pair seemed quite affectionate with each other. When the young began to peep in the box, the parents were very solicitous, removing the fecal material, bringing endless supplies of insects to the open beaks we’d see through the opening. A little more than three weeks after we first heard the peeping of babies, the young would fledge. The family still remained together, the parents teaching flight maneuvers, the young practicing over our garden, the entire family feeding on swarms of insects. Then one day they’d all be gone.

The original box began to fall apart. The roof split apart at the top and the bottom began to rot. Two winters in a row I removed it from its pole and cleaned out the mess inside, drying it afterwards and fitting roofing felt over the cedar shakes, hoping that it would last one more season. In the meantime, I put another box up in another location but no birds went near it. And the time came when the swallows rejected the original box too. That led to me seeking out plans specific to swallows because I missed their presence, the high and tremulous swoop as they courted, the eager noise as they chose their seasonal home, the chorus of infant birds asking for insects. It was as much a part of spring as the first rhubarb or Appledoorn tulips opening their golden bowls to the sun.

We moved into our unfinished house on the eve of John’s thirty-fifth birthday in December, 1982. The walls had been finished with gyproc and painted, the windows were in but had no trim or sills, the exterior doors were hung, of course, but there were not yet interior doors, apart from the bathroom. We had a long trestle in the kitchen with a makeshift sink, though a new stove and fridge gleamed, plugged into the electrical outlets that John and my father had laboriously wired into place, long strands taking power to all the rooms, a chart detailing their journey from the panel on the wall by the fridge.