With No Experience In Such Matters in  General   

To hold a damaged sparrow
under water until you feel it die
is to know a small something
about the mind; how, for example,
it blames the cat for the original crime,
how it wants praise for its better side.

And yet it's as human
as pulling the plug on your Dad
whose world has turned
to feces and fog, human as--
Well, let's admit, it's a mild thing
as human things go.

But I felt the one good wing
flutter in my palm--
the smallest protest, if that's what it was,
I ever felt or heard.
Reminded me of how my eyelid has twitched,
the need to account for it.
Hard to believe no one notices.

By Stephen Dunn

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Other poems by Stephen Dunn:

• Allegory Of The Cave
• At The Smithville Methodist Church
• Biography In The First Person
• Essay On The Personal
• I Come Home Wanting To Touch Everyone
• Landscape At The End Of The Century
• Named
• Poem For People That Are Understandably Too Busy T
• Slant
• Story
• The Routine Things Around The House
• The Sudden Light And The Trees
• Walking The Marshland
• Welcome
• With No Experience In Such Matters