I was inspired to write this after reading Wallace Steven's "Thirteen Ways to See a Blackbird."
I.
His eyes were fixed on dark, flat rooftops
and the birds that moved along them.
From chimney top to chimney top, they
danced across the city majestically.
They were outrageously small,
but he would still remember them
when they surrendered to the East
in the silence of the night.
II.
Morning never rose before he'd go
running up to the peak of an empty street
where he could better view the rooftops
as the birds filed in from the sky.
Disengaging as they landed,
they kept him watching closely
until they all flew away
sending him back to his roofless home.
III.
He always wondered if others could see
the daily show throughout the sky.
And he wanted to ask a man in a suit
in a shiny black car passing through.
On one clear morning shortly after their landing,
he found a man to ask and he replied and said,
"Boy, there are no rooftops for birds to land on.
This town burned down ten years ago."
