A Harvest with a Fox-Brown Thrush

Vincent Hostak

October 5, 2025

I saw him draped in hues of scarcity

a fox-brown thrush pecking

out from a cluster of heat-stressed leaves

its perfect vision fixed upon a brighter fact

there in the thick black center of a shrub:

a fat, red berry.

It has a thousand songs but none for me today. It’s busy

and we only share a thirst for colder months right now.

I stay hidden at the ancient watch

while its tiny eyes are first to chart a course.

Then, the clumsy beak: 

misses, trips, turns, misses again,

finally pinching firmly at

each plump sphere.

It’s then I know we are more alike:

I’m searching for words that burn 

with hints of meaning in the dark.

We are both balanced at the top of a wheel

paving the days behind us and

disarmed by the joy of brighter things

before we swallow them whole.

Vincent Hostak is a writer and media producer from Texas now living near the Front Range of Colorado south of Denver. His recently published poems are found in the journals Sonder Midwest and the Langdon Review of the Arts in Texas, and as a contributor to the TPA. He writes and produces the podcast: Crossings: the Refugee Experience in America.