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Signs and Wonders

Signs and Wonders

Signs and Wonders 1095 883 Will Cordeiro

This dark-feathered bird
with a smoker’s leathery

voice perches on a wire.
It searches the horizon.

It coughs out ceaselessly
a mocking squawk—you

interpret it as a cosmic
joker, imploring Why?

Why have you left so much
bright tinsel for me to forage?

Wind refuses to answer.
You stay silent. Blizzards

of garbage tumble by…
Crow’s cold eye flashes

lizard gold. A cellphone
tower’s been disguised as

a lumbering palm tree.
Flowers by the highway

melt into plastic. Clouds
spawn from the throats

of factories like tumors.
Now the bird ruminates

upon the sun-foiled slop
by a dumpster. God will

provide for the sparrow;
trash sprawls out for crow.

When it wings off, the bird
you mistook for a prophet

gossips to the cut-open sky,
numbering a clamorous flock.

Header photograph © Henry Brown.

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