Birdcall Hymn

Paradise Island Worker's Camp, Christian, WV
16 Feb. 2007

Chirping
smoke alarm means
low power. Every
forty-five seconds, as allocated,
chirp.
To a stockinged-feet marshmallow cadence.

Chirp
every forty-five seconds might drive
an old brown owl batty
for want of nine volts worth of battery.
Chirp
above my bed nearer than God to me.

We heard all
the old sacred songs
without smarm,
which was hard, being atheists both,
alert
all along on guard in case we misspoke.

I plinked
open chords primitive, while my
suddenly ill friend,
in tones of chalk and moss,
lurched
to the tune of the old bucket toss.

Cheap
rooms brownout prowler wears
down the carpet in front
of the powder room squirming,
retch
each forty-five in time with the chirping.

Chirp
what happened to John
Bonham ought to be a
lesson to you boys. Just try to ignore Me.
Chirp
sounds like this trailer’s bound for glory.

Twits
transfixed by pipe calls,
snowound since nightfall. His illness
subsided, what I’d become sick of,
the chirp
died when I started to hiccough.