Apply It gently to the love you've lent me

All I have time to leave you with right now is this - a story by Joanna Newsome:

last week our picture window produced a half-word
heavy and hollow, hit by a brown bird
we stood and watched her gape like a rattlesnake
and pant and labour over every intake

I said a sort of prayer for some rare grace
then thought I ought to take her to a higher place
said: "dog nor vulture nor cat shall toy with you
and though you die, bird, you will have a fine view"

then in my hot hand
she slumped her sick weight
we tramped through the poison oak
heartbroke and inchoate

the dogs were snapping
you cuffed their collars
while I climbed the tree-house
then how I hollered!
cause she'd lain, as still as a stone, in my palm, for a lifetime or two

then, saw the treetops, cocked her head and up and flew away
(while, back in the world that moves, often
according to the hoarding of these clues
dogs still run roughly around
little tufts of finch-down)