At the Lincoln park zoo they keep the storks in the same enclosure as the vultures.
like a withered octogenarian swaddling an infant
or a junkie shaking hands with the pope.
They perched like brothers because birds of a feather often flock together but sometimes they don’t.
I felt like an intruder, splat dab in the middle of this whole rat race, maybe I completed the portrait, dotted the i’s, crossed the t’s.
I don’t think often about my skin starting to droop, starting to stretch and wear thin
tender temples are ones that have been used to think and my encephalon’s a boulder.
I’ve been told I read older i’ve been told I read younger.
I’ve always thought I had the nose of a child.
Red as a buffaloberry in white midwestern snow, the wings of my snow angels span wider each year but my beak stays the same.
Perpetually rounded and rouge, I have the nose of someone freezing even in July.
What is the bird of your twenties, thirties, forties and fifties?
What are the birds of the middle age?
Draw me to them high and mighty and I’ll sit below their perch waiting for falling fruit to smack my head.
The red berries of my youth came from our cherry tree, we lived on cherry street and I can’t remember much of that all other than that it was sweet.
Seeding fruit on our patio to be baked into pies.
Were the old vultures young once? Did they bury their beaks in pies and taste what it was to live before their purpose was to watch small mammals die?
A slice of cherry pie could turn anyone gentle, I really do believe that.
Gentle as a white stork child clad and homeward bound.
I play for each team in the rat race, because I’m biding time and baking buffaloberry and cherry pie.
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