The goldfinches by the garden thistle opened a morning school for polite little brushes. Each puff of down said hello to the beak, nodded to the latch, and only then offered exactly one seed.
We asked the gardener who keeps a pencil behind her ear. They treat the fluff like a napkin, she said. One wipe, one seed, and the thistle looks rounder than before. A neighbor had sworn the whole puff was packing up to leave. By tea it was still there, a little fluffier, with a sparrow waiting in the second row.
The park keeper pinned a note to the gate: class at first light, one seed each, and the latch prefers a nod. He wrote that the goldfinches had already saved the sparrow a seat of down.