.
Anxious Passer
domesticus with broken
wing hopping more
or less unremarked
under a parked car
out of heavy traffic
on Shattuck -- what's
done past and gone
before it's noticed
domesticus with broken
wing hopping more
or less unremarked
under a parked car
out of heavy traffic
on Shattuck -- what's
done past and gone
before it's noticed
Male housesparrow (Passer domesticus), Vilnius, Lithuania: photos by Mindaugas Urbonas, 2007
I will never forget that handsome, intense-seeming, anxious bird.
ReplyDeletethere is a strange hall
ReplyDeletefull of lovely portraits
between the word
alien
and cuckold
there is a stone hand
in the hall
with hollow birdcage
fingernails
where amoebas
of pink down
hover and tweet
through delicate
hollow bones
bagpipes
with alabaster
straws
the sparrow
is lanzarote
ala
anxiomatico
Tom,
ReplyDeleteSweet bird! In a parallel universe, Melospiza melodia 'appears' here ---
6.9
grey whiteness of cloud against invisible
ridge, song sparrows calling from branch
in foreground, sound of wave in channel
part in which such “regions”
equal inertial systems
weight of body, as necessary
consequence, of measure
sunlit white clouds against top of ridge,
wingspan of osprey circling over channel
The sparrow seemed on the one hand pretty helpless, on the other tough enough not to give up without a struggle.
ReplyDeleteWish I knew that feeling.
Otherwise... reverie just now featuring a thirsty sparrow sipping intense inertial systems of a parallel universe out of an alabaster straw at Punta Papagayo, across the burning arid desert of the Rubicon in Lanzarote.
More on that later maybe...
maybe we could find an image of somebody playing
ReplyDeletethe pito d'agua
or
water flute?
I saw a native of Lanzarote playing one years ago in a National Geographic..
As you said, Tom, I have seen very tough and really confident sparrows
ReplyDeleteheartrnding!
ReplyDeleteloved the way you used the scientific name of the bird... creating a deeper perspective... through the double meaning of the words...
Thank you for noticing that, hb... of course the play on the taxonomic nomenclature creates the "hinge" of the poem.
ReplyDeleteJulia, your Buenos Aires sparrows are brilliant survivalists. (I hope everyone who reads this will click to see them!)
Lanny, here's a pretty cool little Nicaraguan pito de agua... meanwhile see you later in Lanzarote (in my dreams).
Well, the journey was a bit taxing, but...
ReplyDelete