birds

If we were to go
           if the house fell in an earthquake

if fire, if fire

Mrs. Anwen Bevan, retired administrative assistant to a vice president in the Utica Mutual Insurance Co., devoted a portion of each day to strategizing about her yard. It was rectangular, fifty feet wide and eighty feet long, hemmed in by the yards of three neighbors. To the left and right, chain-link fences ran the length of her property. Between these at the far end was a ramshackle low stone wall, remnant of an early era of wall- and fence-making in this neighborhood. Mrs. Bevan did not want her yard to be overrun with trees, flowers, and vegetables, or serve as a haven for birds, insects, bees, or squirrels, as was the case with the Cavallo family on her left.

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What realms of gold did they travel,
these old field glasses? Her last pair,
focused beyond the tame sea-stacks 
of glass and bottle, they’d have caught––
from her Boston Harbor condo–– 
birds in maneuvers, breaches of whales.

Not that you ever are. The small, rough dogs lie at your feet or warm your belly.