nests

[milo]

Hello there, Anne. So happy to see you joining the celebration. To my reading, the central metaphor here compares humans to birds through several of our habits, most notably the scavenging of materials for coziness and the re-invigoration with spring. i wonder if there aren't areas where the poem loses focus on purpose and allows itself to drift too much.

Nests

Outside the back window, across the alley
the food coop’s blue recycle barrels

took me a bit to say "food coop" but I think this early pointing of your metaphor is important. What purpose is "blue' serving here? i would scrap it.

loaded with knocked-down materials
are a regular Home Depot
for the local birds.

you have built a very complex sentence here, mostly due to the modification, including the modifying clause. In this sentence we have - food coop's blue recycle and the clause "loaded with knocked-down materials" all chaining together. The sentence loses all impact due to the unnecessary complexity of it. You also end up losing other opportunities to suggest your metaphor or add pleasant sonics due to the hopeless complexity. i would suggest finding a way to simplify what you are saying. Also, materials seems particularly weak and general, especially following the pleasantness of "knocked-down". "are a regular" seems like a misplaced idiomatic colloquialism.

Flying and swooping above the rot
and decay, they were a flurry of life

Flying /and/ swooping, rot /and/ decay - if you need to use 2 words to do the task of one, you are probably selecting the wrong words.

throughout the dead cold of winter

is "dead cold of winter" a cliche or isn't it? hmmm . . . not exactly sure but it certainly feels like a cliche.

before the last of dropped freezer truck ice
had finally melted into the asphalt.

I have to be honest, I don't know what "dropped freezer truck ice is". I know what all of the words are. i am familiar with freezer trucks but there is something odd going on with this construction. you wouldn't need "of" either way and you probably wouldn't need "finally" either. There must be a more elegant way of saying what you mean here.

Before green began poking through the gray cement
cracks, their beaks plucked loose
burlap and twine from the piles,
the warp and weft woven into arborvitaes
across from second story windows.

ok - so while the tense shift isn't wrong, per se, it is unexpected and i wonder if it is worth the bother. I have already read ahead and i see you will shift right back to the present again, why not just stick with present tense -

It is also becoming glaringly obvious that a switch to active voice would help this piece along a lot. i would consider switching completely to active voice.

I don't see the benefit or necessity in describing cement as gray - isn't it usually gray?

What is the significance of the "second story" windows? Do they not nest at the third story level? Do the evergreens in that area not grow much taller? Are the buildings only so high? i must know now.

To warm and feather our homes,

feather is probably perfect without warm

we humans scavenge too,

"we humans" is just ridiculous. i realize the narrator is not a bird by this point, why not just "humans".

from West Elm to farm field flea markets
for the smoothest bed sheets, the comfiest couch,
a vintage mirror.

Now that the Flowering Crabapple blossoms
block the alley view, we open windows and peek out
from our cozy creations, smell the spring air
and join the birds chirping
in concert with the tulips breaking ground.

There is some clumsiness, way too much modification and some issues with tense/passive voice but overall, the metaphor holds up fine and it is pleasant enough.

Thanks for posting.

Good luck!