The Bird Poem by Robert Rorabeck

I don’t know Beethoven’s different symphonies,
But I get drunk in the snow,
And there is evidence until Spring
Of where I’ve laid myself:
I return- I am the sparrow with one good eye
Nesting in your radiator, telling you different things.
You go into the store- You bring a little cash.
Back with you, and it is warm again:
Look at all these different things lined out beside the
Ghosts, the sweet Caroline’s you imagine sitting
Beside you while you coast,
Blowing ghostly bubbles, slapping ghostly thighs:
I twitter in your radio. Or I twinkle like a star-
I get dizzy in your hubcaps, the revolutions of a car.
I know Handel made his water music,
And Mozart laid a requiem, and for a housewarming
Gift it is nice to bring a marble ham;
But it is Spring time now, and that is why I sing,
But of the winter’s harsh sincerity, I don’t whistle a
Thing; For under the blustering shrewdness a lascivious
Bar gets rapped, the aspens lose their favor,
The maple all is tapped. The rivers all but stop proceeding
Like a highway down to the sea, the flowers lose their pollen,
And the pollen lose the bee;
Where little girls whisper in the hoarfrost outside of Church,
The masters lose their favor, their mongrels leave off search:
I don’t know Beethoven’s different symphonies;
But on June 6th we invaded the beaches of Normandy- Now,
I’ve always eaten store bought pie, but for this same reason when
She left me, I knew not to wonder why; but flew around
Spitting cherry pits until
I found a chassis so great as a roaring thing,
And live inside it fully, became your second king. Now I
Wonder where we’re going with all these store bought things,
Maybe to the movies, there and home again.