Mind, they told me you are a bird
Because you have such a gift for flying.
I’d like it if you were some great white thing
with wings that spanned the horizon, sea to sea
plunging in and shooting up
to the stars.
But honestly sometimes you are like a grackle
scavenging among things that are dead, like bad memories
picking at trash other people have left on their tables
with a voice like a car alarm, that can only scream
something like fear
who stays with the other grackles, all the same, and will
not often
go or even wish to go any higher than telephone wires.
I know you can sometimes be a mourning dove
softly crying, the naïve slow one so easily hit by cars
who weeps with joy to hear the morning come
who loves your friends, and every spring
so glad to come home.
Or sometimes, like the mockingbird- small and gray and clean
Alone, and not alone,
watching and listening
singing back in a voice like rain every ugly or beautiful
thing you take in.
