There’s a Man with a Shotgun Who Shoots Blackbirds Trying to Roost in the Trees in His Yard, which is Inside the City Limits of Amory, MS
Pieter Boel (attributed), Dead Birds and Shot Bags, c. 1645-55
Oil on canvas
12 3/4 × 17”
Image courtesy of the Art Institute of Chicago
Evenings, against whatever sky, the blackbirds readjust
the light, sifting upon themselves mid-flight, a gasoline rainbow,
haranguing the trees, their raw songs competing with the dusk.
It is enough that so much life can argue with itself and still know
how to annoy, assault, replenish the air they have accomplished.
But a man on the slack side of 5th watches till they settle, just so
he can shoot the trees. Some fall. Some fly away. He picks up the dead
reloads, watches the sky. And I don’t know what he hopes
for, and I don’t know migratory patterns, and I don’t know city ordinance,
but in Memphis, when the blackbirds swarmed, too many for death to blow
a hole in, the Guard came out armed with chemicals
to neutralize their feather-oils. That night, it rained. The air dipped cold.
Next morning on TV, frozen blackbirds being piled & one seminal
survivor, miraculous, alive, the middle of the heap, was wailing
an unstunned note, a groaning nothing less than Pentecostal.