A Sparrows’ Point of View Something in the way the sun is poking through the leaves of bird and water brings us to this point— outside a suburban church underneath the tongues of yellow blossoms bending low I hear the sparrows called, seem to be watching each other call me into that world of gray river. Not to spill the claylike secret of New Jersey before the storm, but cousin, these dirty little crawlers, with heads poking through the grass, beaks open, chattering— a beautiful dumb ass sort of sound— who compound my impressions, dragging earth as my song. Their lives are a twisted promise, down in the dirt. While the sun shifts, signaling the rain. It is here I kneel, taught how to scavenge, how not to care.

Anne Waldman

• Anne Waldman