Souls Like Mockingbirds

The mockingbird on my block
is doing car alarms again.
He doesn’t have much choice.
Unlike his country cousins,
his options for mockery are somewhat
limited –
sparrows, starlings, crows...
and car alarms.

I would love to say
that he reclaimed the
horrible human noise
insult to the air
invader of private spaces
and made it something of nature again,
strangely beautiful.

But actually it’s still damn ugly
when he does it
nah-nee nah-nee nah-nee
whoooop whoooop whoooop
enh, enh, enh
He passes it through like an
unchewed kernel of corn
telling about his world
letting no one forget what is going on
absorbing nothing
keeping his soul intact.

We do the same.
We talk back to the TVs and the billboards
because it’s only the final word
that gets inscribed on our hearts.

We tell all the stories of pain and powerlessness
that we cannot leave on the doormat
when we come home
because if we speak their lessons full volume
they cannot whisper their hopelessness
in our ears.

The pressure of too much ignoring
forces the grit of what should not be
deep into our shoulder blades
turning them to brittle steel.

So we too
echo the car alarms,
around the dinner table
trying to remember
the order of the different
alarm sounds,
searching out a
rhythm in the
insistence to
drum with our
hands on our
thighs.

We have
souls like mockingbirds.
Loud.
Ever open.
And (almost) intact.