Out this morning
the malignant gardener
moves the bin to the curb
and straightens his shirt.
Later he will do a little
pruning of this and snipping
of that until it is right
or he is tired.
I sit in the Florida room
putting out a cigarette in
an ashtray that cannot let
one in without letting one out.
The gardener will later turn
into a bird. It will not
be many days now, as they are
turning cold enough to crack bones.
I will later turn into a bird as well,
an autumn bird, and will migrate,
this nest left behind, and flight
and warmth and motion will become home.
It’s been restless
being man lately.
The pleasures of the bird
have appeal.
Success, then, is that when you are
gingerly nudged from that nest, like the
cigarettes in the ashtray, your
wings will work before you hit the ground.
On the other hand, we must
continue to feel failure
in our hearts, even as all the
world lays its garlands on us.
What does the bird know
that we don’t? Or the gardener
when he turns into that sparrow?
What does he then know?
What can that cigarette butt there
teach us? Or the end of
these days? Or ours? And, where
will we winter this year, or next?
To be a bird, maybe,
get to the end of it all,
a good son, a good friend,
a good husband, and father,
And nothing more.
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