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Edited on Fri May-22-09 06:29 PM by BlueIris
"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
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