from Birdie Africa
"My father calls me Wolf.
He says that I will see things other people will not see."
*****
"When I come home my father will be singing like an old kind dream. I have seen things at night that other people have not seen."
*****
"Kind Sir: Lost and of your same kind I have turned around twice with my eyes sealed and the woods were white and my night mind saw such strange happenings, untold and unreal."
*****
I am Birdie now I don’t know why.
I squat at the edge of the top
of our rowhouse & I’m without wings I think.
Philadelphia isn’t gentle now. Bad things echo up
& down our neighborhood at night.
I think we wound the people of our street.
I am hurting myself.
I can’t tell time you know.
