The Audubon Society Of Homeless by Ted Sheridan

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The Audubon Society Of Homeless

So far I’ve counted fourteen song birds
Two mocking birds and one large crow
Sitting amongst the many leaves of the Moreton Bay fig tree
Which is located just outside my office window
Where it splits the sidewalk and quenches its thirst
From the busted water mains of a bad urban dream
The birds are all tone deaf to the sounds of the city
As they ratchet up the volume to their beautiful singing
They seem determined to silence or drown out both
The mockingbirds mimicking and the crow’s boisterous caw
For the city’s homeless people who have taken root below
To stop pissing on his tall and beautiful home….
One bag lady with her support stockings filled full of varicose veins
Takes from her torn coat of patches a stale crust of multi grain bread
And looking up into the twisted Ficus with its aerial shoots and roots
She offers the songbirds her body and a piece of her soul
For providing such a sweet relief from the realities of her reality
And the harshness of a world now controlled by so many crows
A confirmation and holy sacrament before the crucifixion of her Lord
The songbirds chirp back in unison they are open to taking her request
But before she can recall the name of her favorite tune
Her significant other makes a selection of his own
When he presses K-3 and his nose against the leathery trunk of the tree
By which to stable his balance as he takes a wino size leak between his knees
And he begins to sing….something Tom Waits would possibly recognize
Of drunken sailors and brawlers and all they deplore
About the likes of an implacable tree which grows so far from its native shore
As if the tree with its happy birds of a feather
Were more indigenous to this desolated acre than he
The crow was not amused or remotely entertained
When from a distance a uniformed pelican could be seen
With a pouch full of unpaid parking tickets……

2007 © T Sheridan

Ted Sheridan

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Michael Shepherd (8/16/2007 10:55:00 AM)
So who needs Bukofsky now we have Ted Sheridan? Great serious fun this.

Denis Joe (8/16/2007 4:48:00 AM)
For me, this is one of the best poems I have read on this site since I have been on it.

The pacing is wonderful. There are so many lines that are truely great, to pull one out. This poem needs re-reading and I have already printed a copy off.

I read through it about five times since you posted it. The striking thing is the use of the crow metaphor. The cynical, yet passive observer of a life in which the crow seems so apt to be part of.

Ted Hughs wrote an excellent collection using the crow metaphor, better not in the manner that you have here.

This is a work of great imagination and pure skill. I take my hat of to you (even though it is raining) .

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