On breaking their necks
To botany students taking an exam
Sure, I’ve done it several times. It comes naturally
To me. I began at my own windows – birds whistled into
The glass and fell, sometimes more than one
Arrayed and suffering on the ground. I found them
Nearly every time. The titmice never died quickly, the wrens
Lingered for hours, but they all seemed to know
What was going to happen. I swear I waited. In hopes
That they would flutter away, but they just chirped
As if they were fledglings again. It was easy
To end it, just a twist of my thumb and forefinger
On the neck’s bridge, as if snapping a toothpick. I learned
This trick from my dad. It was what we did with problems.
To botany students taking an exam
I swear that looking
At your pained faces
Gives me no joy. Erase
What you need to.
Remember. Erase again.
Repeat until you know.
You may find yourself
On a bank or a roadside
Fixing a tire or mapping
The distance to home
When a slate or rock
Falls on your sneaker.
It cracks - see - there is a fern
The one on that test,
It has a heart-shaped base,
Great lizards never saw it,
It has broken for no eye
In 300 million years.
Close the shale.
Keep this secret fact:
No creature will see it again
Through Human eyes, until
Man has shriveled away and
Something new arises.
This is why I trouble you
Today: Now is the time
To strain in preparation
For this rock unbidden
And the life of great age
That opens, then shuts.
Andrew McCall’s work has been published in Blood Lotus Journal, Nibble, The New Mexico Poetry Review and 2River View. He was raised in St. Louis and now work as a professor of biology at Denison University. When not writing or teaching, he enjoys running and taking apart microscopes.
