Ben, by the way, when
one of our parakeets
died last week, was the first to say
when freer days were
over, and the summer,
alas, had ended coolly,
when I didn’t have
time for such a poem
as this on the Lost Menagerie,
as we lowered
the birdcage from our Russian
rafters, Ben was the one to pray.
He prayed, especially
when I dug the lifeless
bird into the autumn earth,
not quite a
see-you-later prayer, more
than an hasta-manana blessing,
days before the
pet store’s replica would
join its brothers in the chapel cage
Ben prayed with
a grateful appreciation,
saying “thank you for your worth.”
And now the other
parakeet, placed beside
those who would live another day
and lifted with them
to hang from the rafters rising
over one who had died
is placid, quiet
as a gravedigger, or
confused, with no words to offer,
and it was for this
parakeet, too, by the way,
that Ben was the first to pray.
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