by Joseph Milosch
What we know
about the mocking bird
is next to nothing.
Some say the bird mimics
everything it hears: a chainsaw,
a Jeep wrenching an iron post,
the squeaking of a wooden gate.
Some say the bird mimics
only the animals it hears:
a feral cat, calling out its young,
a singer on the radio, and from
her room, a woman moaning
in the early morning rain.
Ornithologists say that
a mocking bird mimics
other birds, and that is
how it confuses predators.
My wife says she doesn’t care
what it mimics as long as it sings
its song in another neighborhood.
Perhaps, I respond, the mocking bird
was a raven in another life.
As punishment for steeling eggs
and eating the young of other birds,
it is condemned to live for an eternity
as a mockingbird. Forced to sing songs
of the smaller birds it terrorized, it flies
from tree to tree fleeing the bird it was.
This would explain this morning.
The night seemed to be waiting
for the sun to cross the Tropic
of Cancer. Mist seemed trapped
between being fog or drizzle
as I heard a mocking bird,
sobbing in the orange tree.