Aubade

Listen! to morning: sparrows cluster in the fronds
that gather up the chatter like skirts. Out there,
under the stained fingers of the migrants: the mud-caked
watermelons hefted into a bassinet of arms; strawberries
culled below the humid leaves. Where are they,
the lifted voices of those shunned ones to turn back
the heat and discord of an ugly tribe
spinning past the washed curbs of the boulevards
to work? Where is their weedy chant to deliver me
from bed to the taciturn bus stop when I've shattered
out of a dream of sobbing, and been amazed
to find my face still dry? Who will spare
a hundred scattered birds while the chain saw nearby
grouses through the wild date palm? And what of
them, hunched workers stifled by the spigots
irrigating morning? Sonorous, trenchant, aloof—
Listen! Somewhere: overlords.

© Karl J. Sherlock