Daniel Thomas ~ Poet
WITHOUT
THE MOCKINGBIRD
Each day I work in a downtown
office, where spiky balls,
like porcupine quills, are
mounted
along window ledges to prevent
pigeons from building their
white
excrement-encrusted nests.
Sometimes, laid in an opening
where spikes have broken or
bent,
I see their eggs, neither
innocent
nor beautiful, but necessary to
perpetuate
a waddling stiff-necked grandeur
among soot and shit and purple
feathers,
high above sidewalks and
cardboard beds
and office workers, neither innocent
nor beautiful, but necessary to
perpetuate
the same fleeting grandeur--
all of which is not to dismiss
the soul’s mystery in the
material world.