Carmela’s birds’ blues
“You know what,
two of the birds just died
mi doli propriu u cori, amariceddi
(I can’t tell you I sorry I feel, poor things)”
“Did the frost kill them?”
“No, they’d made it through
the frost
and then I went and fed them
some lettuce.
You know, I made a salad
and used the inside leaves for us,
washed and dried the ones outside,
(as I used to do all the time)
and gave it to them.
Some of the birds didn’t want them,
but Gina and the canary ate them.
Next morning I found them
belly up dead.
Cu sapi quanti porcherii ci mentunu
(who knows what kind of crap they put on it).
It was so sad…… the canary
had just started to sing,
and I can’t get another one
‘cause now they cost 90 dollars.”
She told me this
almost blushing,
like it wasn’t important enough
for her daughter with lotssa education
who wrote and taught things she didn’t understand
and argued until she stuttered
about things that seemed extreme.
This she told me as we walked
through velvet green hills
on a path snaking away from the street
where 100 Sunday hikers parked their cars,
winding away from the wounds inflicted on the hills
where every day 1000s of tons of rock were drained
and turned into cement and gravel
for other cars to drive on.
(1991)