Why the Bird Dropped You, Marlan

Two large black birds with 8-foot wingspans swooped into a backyard in Lawndale, Illinois and took a 10-year-old boy for a twenty-foot ride, his mother said yesterday.
- from a newspaper story

You’re just finding out
what you don’t need to believe. 70 pounds,
not enough yet in the world to realize
what your screaming said. To your mother
waving her own arms like wings,
wanting the world to slow down for a second.
To the bird, scared in its prehistoric brain,
just playing with you and the experts who would say
no North American bird like this.
What could you know
over the beating of wings, of birdheart
and your own heart flapping out the ribcage,
over softness of breastfeathers tousling your hair?

Your weight? Not too much for this bird.
Not the scream flying out your small mouth.
Maybe the bird itself, feeling its own hugeness
crowding the day, too suddenly unexpected.
Lifting you like another feather
but straining the limits broad daylight allows.
At night with no one watching
you could have gone farther,
you and this great bird together
no longer a bundle of uneasy grace.

Moving in and out of the dark all night
until breakfast, and your mother calls you down
and you come from wherever you are.
Anything less conspicuous
than a Midwest summer afternoon!

From now on you’ll hear a thousand answers to
no question. When you talk with your friends
and the reporters come flocking,
stick to your ten years,
all the facts they want to know.
Later, in color encyclopedias,
you can look for names that fit
the jetblack wings, the 12-inch head,
the rings around the neck and the claws
that came down on your shoulders and had you,
Marlan, had all of them going for awhile.


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