Wednesday, November 1, 2017

Books Are Magic, Brooklyn by Yuyutsu Sharma


During our restless
search for a newly
opened Bookstore
‘Books Are Magic’
on Smith Street
or some street close by,
we came across
a dead warbler,
a tiny Amazon miracle,
greyish mantle, ornate
orange head and bluish wings.
Wearing a child’s smile,
it lay still                
and when Jack touched it
with the tip of his walking stick,
it didn’t break
into a swift flight
only got pushed away.
A Prothonotary warbler,   
a tiny barrister
of swampy woodlands
of Nicaragua, 
it lay prostrate,
the lost prayer
of a beaten warrior.
‘They die every day
 in thousands,’
Jack croaked in
his shrill Brooklyn
accent, as we moved on.
“Over a billion
dead so far
hitting themselves
against glassy panes
of the Hi-rise.
They should have
a legislation to put
mock hawks on the glass panes,”
he complained,
"so they wouldn’t
dare to go near them
and drop dead.”
Like things that
once flew and shone
in our skies like magic.


@ Yuyutsu Sharma

1 comment: