Lunch Poems
Poem Written on the First Anniversary of My Father’s Death
To inaugurate our poetry desk, a new poem by JAY HOPLER, author of Green Squall and winner of the 2005 Yale Series of Younger Poets Award.
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If a Bird Can’t Fly It Walks
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Curled on sacks of cypress mulch, their bodies slack with sleep,
two cats:
One black, one a dirty gray,
Both scrawny and flea-foul.
When a boy
Rides by on his pawn-shop
Bicycle, yelling and knocking over garbage cans,
They do not lift their heads.
They do not lift their heads
When the thunder drops its load of stones
Into the rain barrel—.
Of what handsome
Rats must they be dreaming!
What evenings passed in fat
Repose! Not even the wind,
Its cold honed on the hinges
Of foreclosure signs, has edge enough
To cut them from such feast
As they have found; not even the rain
When it comes…if it comes—
Will trouble them.
two cats:
One black, one a dirty gray,
Both scrawny and flea-foul.
When a boy
Rides by on his pawn-shop
Bicycle, yelling and knocking over garbage cans,
They do not lift their heads.
They do not lift their heads
When the thunder drops its load of stones
Into the rain barrel—.
Of what handsome
Rats must they be dreaming!
What evenings passed in fat
Repose! Not even the wind,
Its cold honed on the hinges
Of foreclosure signs, has edge enough
To cut them from such feast
As they have found; not even the rain
When it comes…if it comes—
Will trouble them.
—Published February 10, 2010
