Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, MOCKINGBIRD, by LEN ROBERTS


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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

MOCKINGBIRD, by                     Poet's Biography
First Line: They're all gone
Subject(s): Mockingbirds


They're all gone, the two goldfinches, bluejay, twenty or more crows, the
mockingbird
that kept me company through the summer
while I cut dead trees and burned brush,
hearing him by the barn, the chicken coop, the pond,
remembering my father could change tunes like that on his harmonica,
six trills, then three, then another completely different song, mockingbird
this, mockingbird that,
as I thought about leaving my wife, my son, my home, entering silence
the way my old man did when he got drunk for seven years and finally burst his
sodden heart,
the way my mother did those many nights he'd come home smelling of someone else,
silence palpable as the peaches that hung all August for the bees to dream into,
the ones I'd watch up close as they burrowed into the sweet holes
and covered themselves with the sticky juice
to the point that they could not flutter their wings, just fall, buzzing, to the
ground,
where the birds would come to peck and eat them.








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