Poem-a-Day

Before breakfast, we drive into town  
to buy a  Star Tribune  for my father,  
who usually rides along, but today sleeps late.  
From the passenger seat, you stuff 
my mouth with a saucer peach.  For energy, 

you say, my fog before food well-known.  
The beige flesh tastes like jasmine.  
Honey. A Persian fairy tale.  
In his La-Z-Boy near the big window,  
my father will read a section, nod off, 

wake, read another, all afternoon.  
You and I no longer bother—every day  
the same: people killing, being killed.  
Instead, we cook, clean. We look  
after my father, keep our kids busy. 

At the One-Stop, I take a copy 
off the dwindling stack, set my father’s exact  
change into the cashier’s tattooed hand—  
my daily deadline met. Heading home,  
you spot it first, uphill, in a birch, 

glowing, a blue pilot light. A flaming  
blue arrow shooting toward us. I can’t  
stop, can’t swerve, it strikes our windshield.  
I see it in the rearview mirror glance  
onto the shoulder.  Maybe it’s still alive, 

you pray.  Maybe we can put it in a box  
until it’s well. So I reverse, hope it flies away.  
Could I mercy-kill it under a wheel? 
Standing by, we watch a wing flail once,  
an eye shut, the end. Even a little death 

sucks out our air. Where it hit gravel,  
one feather sticks up. Such color!  
Lapis-and-turquoise filigree.  
We kick a shallow grave with our heels,  
and deliver my father the news.