Mary di Michele

A Thousand Birds

Summer again and that drama I played
such a mortifying role in changed. We
went back to swimming at the pit, back to
the hullabaloo of boys.

I saw B. there every day though he rarely
heeded my come-hither looks. I frittered
away hours, seated with books, my Tasso,
my Tommaseo, a thousand

birds sang in different scales, alternating
then harmonizing. Sweetly they let silence,
now modulated by human voices,
by trills and shrills,

absolutely animal fill me. Every
thing distracted, yet stoked my obsession,
my envy for those meadows where B. stepped
shoeless into the long grass.