Unfledged

Weekends too my father roofed poor neighborhoods,

at prices only his back could carry

into profit.  In the name of labor’s

virtue—or was it another bill collector’s callous

calling again?—my brother and I became

his two-boy cleanup crew.  During those hard,

gloved hours under the sun’s weight, I studied

my father, from the ground—the distance he kept

between us his version of worry.  This work gave him

chance to patch over his latest night in county jail, to shout

over something other than his drug-heavy belly song.

More than witnessing the way he knew a hammer,

more than the sweat, the grace of his body grew

when I noticed the cheap pigeon magazines tucked

in his back pocket—black & white photos

of pedigreed squabs he’d fallen for, folded

for a later that never came: the careful study we do

with things that refuse to become ours.

Evenings, he tended to his own home-made

kit-box of birds, bathed in the constant coos

from a mongrel mix of orphaned Birmingham rollers

and hand-captured homers that he bred the distance out of,

turning our block into the new destination

their blood pulled them toward.  On the job,

from below, as he perched and drove nails through

the day’s heat, I checked the silhouetted length of his back

for signs of stiffness, and his impossible arms, anything

I might point to—certain, like most people,

if the ache could be found, you’d know

how to start soothing, where to place your hands.