Produced by Dennis Camire

This week’s poem is by former Maine Poet Laureate Betsy Sholl. Her most recent book is “Otherwise Unseeable,” published by Wisconsin Poetry Series.

 

Two for a Penny

By Betsy Sholl

 

Little sparrow, how easy to disparage you,

Ubiquitous as you are, fidgeting from thicket

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To thicket along the block. I’ve watched you

 

Flock like squatters in a tree, seen you fly off

Through a fence hole, straight as a sprung arrow.

All shadow and flash, at home in my eaves,

 

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You’re easy, too, at the zoo, hardly noticed,

Left free to dart and zoom, grow fat

On dropped scraps. You talk, you chat,

 

But don’t sing, just chirp, cheep—cheap

I can hear my mother say, and common,

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As if those were the same thing.

 

But sparrow, what kind of love hovers

Only around what’s rare, missing, dissing

What’s in plain sight, ordinary as air?

 

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You who remain after the others fly off,

Now you’ve gathered in a tree’s bare rafters,

In your color of twig and winter-gray sky.

 

From your beak a tiny breath puffs out

Through cold air, sign of all that’s warm inside,

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All that won’t be spared, but will be counted —

 

Is that possible: every feather and fall? —

As if somewhere there’s a book of sparrows,

Of sorrows, heavy ledger listing us all.

 

Dennis Camire can be reached at dcamire@cmcc.edu

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