Before Curfew
To answer you–finches, wrens,
robins & sparrows, and crows join,
rustling their wings, arguing
on a telephone line. A blue house
cacophonous with a cook-out
and all that is
summer music. A child silent
on the lawn chewing grass
in contemplation of the clouds.
& in the distance traffic trammels
with speakers blaring the brash
notation for this city. An instrument
from a high window, my daughter
playing the piccolo, solitary
as any artist who has practiced
solos with the birds. Softly
she speaks back to them
the same way Sonny Rollins
rehearsed his saxophone’s
arpeggios with the pigeons
on the Queensboro bridge. I
hear my daughter riff back & forth
with the sparrows. I am
rarely alone these days
after years of being alone
& my wife is cooking now.
It’s a quarter to three on a Sunday
as the demonstrators
gather downtown—if
the police charge the news
will say they were provoked.
The world might set on fire
but here it has not yet.
The grills are lit–come
& eat with us. Come to
our table without handcuffs.
Is there an amnesty plea
for this to end with pie
& work with good wages?
& on into the city
the tear gas explodes.
How many are arrested
for not having papers?
A low moan I can’t figure
at first from the sill, elegiac
as if in answer: a gray dove’s
long sorrowful note.
• • •
Sean Thomas Dougherty’s most recent books are: Death Prefers the Minor Keys from BOA Editions and The Dead are Everywhere Telling Us Things, winner of the 2021 Jacar Press Full Length Poetry Prize, selected by Jessica Jacobs and Nickole Brown. His book The Second O of Sorrow was winner of the Housatonic Book Award and co-winner of the Paterson Poetry Prize. He works as a long-term caregiver and Medtech along Lake Erie.