Do Not Mistake Me

for someone who loves
to do little. This is my chief
sacrifice: the child asked to hold
still for so long that the boiled sweet
on its tongue cankers the flesh
there, quivering with
purposelessness.

Now, a pigeon can
mourn when whatever's
important to it -- a broken biscuit,
stem of horsetail, or its mate -- falls
beneath the wheels of a bus, and
the moment of meaning is lost.
In the life of a bird, rote crisis
has an existential thrust,

and the steadfast pigeon can
thrust-totter-thrust neck-first
through the crux of waiting, with
two sure-fire orange eyes to stare
down the sun. But not me. The dance
of angst bores me; it arrives
but never sits, for
I'm capable

of impatience in
even the sound of a clock,
have been known to dream bombs
into the workings of things that tick-tock:
the mechanical toy, the egg timer, my own
overstudied right eye, the neck
of the pigeon, even
as it flocks.