Houses built on the sand edge of once was,

used to be the swale which halted the ocean’s

proud waves, now yards fenced in and sodded, with 

covenants against imagining.  

On a summer morning before the heat takes hold

and wondering lowers its shades

it is no small pleasure to be awakened

by a rooster with a cackle that is all proprietary glee

for servicing his pack, his hens clucking and gleeful 

when their mission is accomplished.

There is something to be said

for the irreducible force of a bird

with nothing else in mind but the sound of its own voice;

not for him the Do Not Disturb and No Trespassing

signs to let the world know your property lines. 

No quieting his screech and cackle, 

the air acoustical with his narcissistic racket.

Some in the neighborhood would like to shoot

the damn bird.  But I say listen and be disturbed.

Listen and let your irritation rise, a tremble

to rumple the hedges of your pressed down life. 

Feel it thicken your throat: a cry for the thing which 

is perched on all your fences: even as you

sleep, and wake, and eat, and love, and lose, and 

begin it all again the next morning, and the next.

Listen, until you fall out

of the rhythm you didn’t know 

was pressing you in, and rattle 

the stretching day with the sound of your own crowing.

During the night some critter has gnawed a hole through 

my screen porch. Even now, a loud mouthed sparrow 

clings to the same screen, scratching its way in.