March 16: One of Those Days, Mona Van Duyn, "Letter from a Father IV"

I've had one of those days where I don't feel like I've accomplished a heck of a lot.  These blog posts will probably be the only lasting things that I've done.  Didn't volunteer in a homeless shelter.  Didn't rescue a stray dog.  Didn't even say a prayer today.

And Saint Marty didn't raise a bird from the dead, either.  Read the poem.  You'll get it.

Letter From a Father

by:  Mona Van Duyn

IV

Almost called you on the telephone
but it costs so much to call thought better write.
Say, the funniest thing is happening, one
day we had so many birds and they fight
and get excited at their feed you know
and it’s really something to watch and two or three
flew right at us and crashed into our window
and bang, poor little things knocked themselves silly.
They come to after while on the ground and flew away.
And they been doing that. We felt awful
and didn’t know what to do but the other day
a lady from our Church drove out to call
and a little bird knocked itself out while she sat
and she brought it in her hands right into the house,
it looked like dead. It had a kind of hat
of feathers sticking up on its head, kind of rose
or pinky color, don’t know what it was,
and I petted it and it came to life right there
in her hands and she took it out and it flew. She says
they think the window is the sky on a fair
day, she feeds birds too but hasn’t got
so many. She says to hang strips of aluminum foil
in the window so we’ll do that. She raved about
our birds. P.S. The book just come in the mail.