The Birds of Pennsylvania
 
 
All those dioramas in the Natural History Museum
concerned with certain death—the seal’s snout just
below the ice where a mannequin waits, spear ready.
Or the suckling fawn lifted by invisible string
as her mother buckles in the wolf’s embrace.
Here the Bedouin reaches, fingers splayed like a lily,
his camel crumpling into the roiling pack of lions.
He tries to unhook his boot from the stirrup, but where to go?
There’s nothing in the display to suggest escape.
 
What did we learn—my sisters and I—those afternoons
wandering the exhibition halls? Certainly not
the Latin names of all the beasts or that the world
is a place of constant peril. We knew that already.
My older sister cornered at the bus stop when a man
spread the wings of  his coat, the mangy security guard
at school left notes in my other sister’s locker, and I kicked free
from a pack of boys who trapped me on the jungle gym.
 
Our favorite, or at least the one we returned to the most,
was The Birds of Pennsylvania. Sparrows and jays, two doves
and a cardinal, all clustered at the feeder, scattering seeds
for squirrels waiting on fresh snow. Part of a house
with a pitched roof and flowered curtains in the window.
Not a cat in sight. We wondered, seeing each other
though the glass, if, by magic, one of us entered
that little red house, would she let the others in.