The Ornithology of Conviction

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This afternoon, the prison yard
Hushed by rain of the house

Sparrows’ chirrups – those earrings
I have worn at my desk by the dogwood-

Shaded window, gone missing. Each morning,
In passing beneath the breezeway rafters,

An explosion of pigeons.
I keep telling my students that

Their fates are not ironic. I walk
The dog in the evening and I listen

To the thrashers flipping dead leaves
Under the wilting azaleas.

I used to think I had lived
An incredibly clever life.

I am a man and it is important
I mean what I say: My students

Are mothers whose children are tucked
Into strange beds by state-

Appointed strangers. So it is very important
To me it is very important.

Luncheons with the warden we are
To bow our heads in the chaplain’s prayer.

Eyes closed, I imagine the red-shouldered hawk
Gigging pigeons in a mid-air tumble of wings

And talons above the perimeter fence,
Or sometimes heaving up out of the aster

And crimson clover a small and broken
Fur-bearing thing.

April: The sparrows, the chickadees, and now
The starlings have come to the annuals

The women have planted in beds
Along the sidewalks, and they pass by

In their monochromatic blue dresses,
Saying, See the beauty God has given us?

And they do not think that a part of them
Explodes toward the sky with the pigeons –

That a part of that part is barreled down,
Neck broken, by the red-shouldered hawk’s

Immutable claws. I do not mean
A house sparrow to be anything but

A house sparrow – although recounting one
Is both a willful act of concentration

And, out from the cobwebbed breezeway
Rafters of the brain, an unpredictable

Unfurling of wings.
Class cancelled, I read

The latest Kooser. Hicok.
I will not share with my students,

But it matters. To the women,
The annuals matter.

The annuals matter to the guards
And to the birds.

And to the women planting them,
The dirt beneath their fingernails

Matters. The first lesson: Everything
Matters. I tell them. They tell me.

Birdless, this afternoon is a gift
Wrapped tightly in rain.