Marc J. Sheehan
The Parliamentarian of Fowls Expresses Disapproval
for Keith Taylor
The robin that nested atop my back porch
lattice didn’t seem overly concerned with all
the sawing and hammering, the swearing
and painting I engaged in while building
a gate to keep deer from eating the hostas.
Had I a greener thumb I’d have let it go
but those perennials are the only things
the former owner planted I haven’t killed.
I mean, even the rocks lining the garden
look shriveled, as though they might be turning
into pebbles, into sand, into dust.
Each year from the time the eggs were laid
until the chicks completed their ungainly,
panic-inducing fledging I worried,
kept the sliders closed, ate inside. Still, when
I found the nest on the porch planks I thought
about super-gluing it back in place,
because my haphazard, very short life
list includes robins, as well as bluebirds
crows, sparrows, vultures, Woolworth’s parakeets,
Ford Falcons, Buick Skylarks, and White Pigeon
Michigan. Last year the robin hatched
two broods, doubling the loss, I suppose.
Sometimes you just have to start over, have to
pull yourself together, like when you find
robin eggs shattered on the sidewalk, fragile
shells the exact color of the sky,
which, unlike the country, is not falling
down around you even as you weep.
Marc J. Sheehan is the author of the poetry collections Greatest Hits (New Issues Poetry and Prose, 1998), Vengeful Hymns ( Ashland Poetry Press, 2009), and Limits to the Salutary Effects of Upper-Midwestern Melancholy (Split Rock Review, 2017), as well as Dissenting Opinion from the Committee for the Beatitudes (Etchings Press, 2019), a book of flash fiction. He lives in Grand Haven, Michigan.
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