With the most recent
tabulations
from the Department
of Global Poetry,
there are 685 billion, 278
million, 431 thousand,
294 poems about birds in
trees. Poems with only trees
and not a bird
have not been tallied.
Or, suffice to say, vice-
versa.
Today there was a
shelling in
Jabalya—a boy
without his hands. Today
there was another
missing girl. Her mother
ever-fretful
on Kettle Point. Today
Jacko ran the red
when you were shopping.
Your son will come and
visit as he grows. Writing
40 poems about the
wrens, who dart between the
branches every dawn.
Play chicken with the sun
when no one’s looking. It never
leaves its path or ever
blinks. We find that
out the hard way.
Or maybe someday
in your gurney, on the way to
surgery, wrapped as if some
pharaoh from a tomb, he’ll recite
a pair of couplets
when he’s twelve,
one about the crow
which soars aloft;
a greening , sprouting
twig held in its
beak—the other to say the
night has finally fallen,
the flood has finally
ceased this time for
good.
Andreas Gripp
February 23, 2025
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