A pigeon perches on a power line.
Little Double-Dutch girls chant
“birdie, birdie sittin’ on a wire—”
The last sun alights on the houses.
The pigeon and the girls become
the song whispered by the alder trees.
Friends, I say this in the lowdown
of the evening, when the day reckons
and dark swells over the street
like a mushroom cloud. In this fable
the bird is a newly crowned king,
clutching tight to its thin throne.
The girls then split my heart
into flower; the pigeon spreads
its wondrous wings. Somewhere in this story
is you, sitting in your own evening,
trying to fend off the night
or, at the very least, survive it.
Even when the Double-Dutch girls
are called away and the bird rises
beyond human sight, even though
the trees are ripped into the air
by the terrible mind’s eye, we all
find our way back to skin and bone.
