Sparrow in a Cardboard Box

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SPARROW IN A CARDBOARD BOX


                — May 4, 2021


Right hand clenching

        tight on the extend-a-leash, 

        my other reaches 

down to coddle in the drenched

fledgling, shaking with a chill. 

        What kept it, I suppose, alive,

        was Odie's sheer surprise

it didn’t fly, his inabil-

ity to know what to do

        having actually caught one.

        Wings tucked tight between my palms,

I lay it in the shelter of

the neighbor's maple tree,  

    reciting to myself the part

    delineating how the Lord 

sustains the birds of air, not me.

A few blocks later  

    and we double back, my question

    being, what about the wet ones

who can't obtain the air?

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