So talk amongst yourselves.
That's what I used to say when I was teaching,
and I couldn't find my place.
I'd always say, talk amongst yourselves.
Anyway.
I won't say at this time.
Flight.
A man reaches under a car and removes a bird, a broken wing.
I hadn't seen the bird.
I'd been looking up at other birds
cutting like razors across my line of vision, which reminds
me of Un Chien Andalou where a man slits
a woman's eyeball and the vitreous humor spills out.
It would be, I was thinking, metaphorically,
like perception spilling out.
The bird agitates in the man's cupped hand, then settles down.
Certain birds, the black bird, for one,
make nest shaped like cups.
So the man's hand is a nest.
All the while, the man is talking
what we will eat for breakfast.
How good the son feels, as if there
were no bird trembling there, as if he'd never reached with one
unbroken sweep under the car to rescue it.
I should have been looking down.
There reside blue and orange Faro cigarette packages, bottle
caps with stars, tiny discarded plastic toys
to slip into a pocket avec stones.
The bird-- yellow beak, long tail feathers--
once or twice opens its mouth as if to join the conversation.
Then thinks better of it.