COLD ALABAMA NOVEMBER
WITH YELLOW-TAILED HAWK
cold morning in november
the sky low like an airplane memory
fine fog misting the tops of these last few
Appalachian hilltops:
the WalMart parking lot
is full at six a.m.
people of every conceivable variety
are walking up and down the parking lot
(most have the $99 19" TV
for which I have come
yet I'll not have it)
and it's not daylight yet . . .
I drive home the same way I came,
the back way, eyeballing the old houses,
noticing a chunky black woman who's
sweeping the front threshold of her house,
wondering idly if the presence of older technologies
alongside newer ones is an indication of the laziness
of your generic human mind and body:
do we keep the older ways as a comfort
to help us along as we learn the new?
Back at home
a yellow-tailed hawk
flies over my head, close,
as I get out of my car
It pauses, puts down claws,
stays in a completely dormant
hickory tree just above the edge of the house --
I stand and watch and watch
the yellow-tailed hawk
looks carefully around the domain
as mockingbirds and sparrows mount
slow territorial disagreements from
the branches beneath
You might say
That man is simpleminded,
engrossed in tiny details of life
which do not matter to the bulk of us,
and I might reply,
Yeah, that's possibly true.
You might laugh and say
The writer of that is not in
any real world, he's escaped most
forcefully hasn't he?
I'd nod my head
and watch the trees outside
Mere Fiction | Stories | Poetry | Images
© 1999, 2004 Thomas N. Dennis