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Bird Made of Iron
By: Marianne
Boruch |
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Black and
hand-sized and one leg is intent on
the going. One holds back as
he seems to move left (he doesn’t),
seems to want to reach (he
doesn’t) the small blue Chinese plate (not
from and the tiny
flashlight (it neither flashes nor dreams of
any dark trail) at
the other end of the mantel
(no fire down there for days).
Nevertheless is an
astonishing word, made of three
words. Always about to (you only
think you’re idling),
in exactly the right
order. To start with nothing
and rise to a little more (or less).
Bird I knight here and
now--though not the sir, he’s way beyond those puffed-up
feathers. But the henceforth, yes: Never the Less! Whose greatness— he has a thoroughly wicked eye.
And beams mine back to
me. |
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A
Face Whole conversations. I have them without looking at a face. Sometimes I hear, I even listen. I tilt my head and look the part. Am close enough to picture the dance recital minutely described, a mother-in-laws’ birthday
party, the meat going bad in the we-thought- it-was-working freezer, grass still
growing, thorns on roses, leaves turning their dogged brilliant red and yellow. And grief, certainly grief.
I’m sorry, I say, and mean. I’m
sorry, looking down because—partly—whoever it is stalls too, looking into herself, and
away, saying: it’s not like it
was a surprise. And
later, I search for a face, and find little memory of the morning, heartbeat on a scanner at it, at it, as usual. No,
not her expression, not how she looked unlocking such a private room. But two bodies bending toward each other, the distance
of a low voice between us, not quite a whisper, not touching, but a nod,
half an arm’s length, the hesitation of the fragment: and when did he? and so
good you
could…as she filled in whatever sentence. What about her eyes? Had she taken off her glasses? Was she blinking too much, so close to blurring, a look I could have been a mirror for had I a face myself I wanted or could leave behind. |
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Lunch The zoo. So
one thinks up from the amoeba,
way ahead to one’s great-grandchildren someday or no
day. Then back where old photographs
live, those minutes locked in the
ice of someone’s
remembering, some uncle with a camera. But the zoo—here!-- is very
matter-of-fact: warm bodies (monkeys, zebras, any
moving thing with beak,
with feathers) versus the flashing
cold and/or hot ones: the bite-the-dirt- for-all-we-do-wrong
ones or the soft-bellied
frog or the salamander flattened, shrunk, puffed
out, its legs, arms, sweet little
claws completely not a snake,
having lured no one and nothing. I was saying:
consider the metal bars. To keep such wonders
in, to keep us--smaller wonders—out. Almost noon,
some uniformed someone turns up with
bananas, seeds, fetal pigs,
apples, the works. How not to love this
guy?--his trusty indifference,
his all-right-another-day-of-it shrug and
off-key whistle. The animals look up. Something is about to happen. Food does that. In
this saddest of worlds, think lunch! and an ocean of hope rides over
us. Is it hope? And too cheap? This metaphor
filling the moment? the mind? the life
finally and exactly? I mean the guy’s coming closer, the one with a bucket. And a shovel. |
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