Regarding The Intentional Attendance Of Poetry Readings

Our neighbors, directly behind us,
have an aviary. Maybe eighty birds:
cockatiels, parrots, parakeets,
little tropical songbirds.
Sometimes a sparrow hawk,
a native to the region,
comes and sits on top of the cage.
I've seen him,
seen the way he comes.
The racket beneath him, curiously enough,
doesn't surge,
doesn't die down.
The racket, it seems, doesn't know any better—
the racket is forever the racket.
He sits atop it,
conspicuous in his silence,
alien,
barely bothering to look down
through the screen.
What his sitting there means to accomplish
can
in rare pressing lulls
be distinguished from happy departure.

Copyright © 2007 Joe Wenderoth All rights reserved
from No Real Light
Wave Books
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission