Point of View

Against the ice blue morning sky

at the corner of Verplank and 9D,

A taut telephone wire from south to north,

Wide

as if I was sitting in the front row of a movie house

and had to swivel my head to see from one end to the other;

And on the wire in the very middle of this vision,

A tiny bird, alone, perched as still as a concrete wall.

Not moving.

Perched. 

Her eyes, unblinking, looked on

as the cars processed to the light, waited for the green,

and moved on north to the bridge,

or south to Main Street, busy with places to go:

unimportant day stuffers to keep making sense

and to give a rhythm to humdrum life. But she,

on that wire alone, crowned the queen of the

intersection, overlooked her fiefdom, and

pitied her poor subjects in the moving cars below

for their inability to fly.