The BlueIris Semi-Nightly Poetry Break, 5/22/09

"The Bird"

Even when I held my hands over my ears
I could hear the sirens screaming down the avenue:

somebody else's trouble: broken or
bleeding or burned: and through the porch windows

a bird in the ash tree kept calling out: bleating,
like the hungry cry of a human child and wouldn't stop.

Even when I opened the window
and yelled at the bird, it bleated on

the way a child does when you shake it.
Down the four flights to the courtyard of the building

I could still hear it,
and around the corner to the mailbox: there too.

Cool Hand Luke finally said: Just don't hit me again Boss. Please
just don't hit me again.

And his men turned against him and spit in his food.
No attic anymore; no stumbling drunk, he's dead;

no belt; no pencil; no safety pin,
only a summer afternoon in a small city: porch windows,

bird singing. How many hands does a city have?
Yesterday each one was a sound.

And the bird's trouble? It must have gotten solved
--all that insistent complaint.

By the time I fell asleep, it was quiet.

~Marie Howe

;-)

If you're going to throw shit, at least aim it at a worthwhile target.