Communicating the Bird

A Poem by Robert Ronnow

How many poetry books = 1 Nissan Pathfinder exhaust system.
How many bluebirds? Money is how we thank people for what makes
      them special
How we express our love and gratitude.

Weight and moods, up and down, with weather and outcome of meetings.
I am so sick of humanity, people. Wouldn't I prefer chickadees?
Then I get home, that is the comfortable tree hole I've been longing for.

Aaron pitches and plays piano. Zach likes lacrosse and math.
The mound was soft, sand, with a hole big enough for an urn or to hide a plover
But Aaron pitched carefully anyway, slow strikes and the opposing team scored.

What would God's work be? Meaningless question. Today's schedule:
Write fund raising letters, conserve small farms. Local food, local jobs.
      Don't transport food coast to coast. Save fuel, less CO2.
In my opinion the dislocations resulting from climate change and global
      warming will be within man's adaptive capacity. On the other hand.
Also, green industry will open a vast employment market, a job for every
      grackle, crow.

The good life, unsustainable, we're poisoning our children although my
      children are not so poisoned. They're bald. Unusually bald. Good
      looking bald. Future of man bald. Happy bald.
Bald eagle. Nesting, mating near Karen Sheldon's, a conservationist,
      philanthropist, on the river, whose husband recently died. During
      romantic dinner on a second honeymoon in Paris, so I've heard.
That's Jake's spirit come home as an eagle, Karen said. Isn't that
      great, I said, and the she-eagle he's nesting with!
�" --I'm gonna kill that b***h.

Compare Captain Carpenter and In a Prominent Bar in Secaucus One
      Day. In each case the hero's (heroine's) body declining
Under life's duress. Anything located in Secaucus, NJ could not be
      considered prominent, could it?
In the end, clack clack takes all. Hard to end a poem better than that.
      Clack clack the crow's beak, upper and lower mandibles meeting.
      From hunger, or it just does. Crows clack clack to communicate.
Whitman's greatest poem is Out of the Cradle . . . also involving
      communicating birds, in what is initially an embarrassingly emotional
      display. All that italicized moaning and yearning. Get away.
Then, clack clack, he turns on you. Death lisping, straight into your eyes.
      Suddenly you realize you should have taken him seriously, been
      paying attention.

In the meantime, traffic, corn, new exhaust system, ask for money, save
      farms, poor people, sun on garden, whole wide world, wars, stars.
I gave up long ago on a quiet world. Now going deaf. Then it will be
      quiet, too quiet.
No more birding by ear. "No more f*****g." I mean really . . . I was
      moved as anyone by Hall's honest poem about Jane dying and I
      guess f*****g can be music to someone's melody, stand for living,
      but not me.
No more birding would have had more meaning. I'd rather bird than
f**k. No more f*****g, no more worry, no more war.

Which is why I'm gonna kill that b***h is so funny, such a life-affirming comeback.
At first I worried Karen really believed the eagle is her husband. Maybe she does,
But that punch line makes her the kind of woman I want to know.