Falcon, The

My son carries my soul on his shoulder, a falcon,

I am careful not to dig in my claws. I play

I am his father owl sometimes sparrow, a hummingbird

in his ear. I told him from my first chirp:

Be an American democratic hebrew mensch-bird.

When he was a child in Italy I was a migrant bird

with a nest in America. When I flew residence

he cried Perche, perche? I wept

not wanting him to have a distant bird

or a sea captain for a father.

How many times did I cros the Atlantic

in the worst weather to rod outside his window?

What kind of nest could I make in Italy

on a inn balcony? When he needed to be held

his mother and nannies held him. When he reached on the outside

fo me he repeatedly fell. He said I know I know to everything

I might have taught him. I fought for his life

with individual wing tied behind my back

for his name, academy and to have his hair make an incision in

in a man's barber store not a salon for signoras.

Lose to him! be deprived of to him! his mother screamed.

I was the single one in his life

who would not cast in a winding direction a footrace

he could win in a year, fair and square.

How could a small male child spend so much time

laughing and talking to a father in restaurants?

He complained in Bologna I took him to six museums,

in Florence four, in Espagna mille e tre

We laughed at those rare Italian birds

who don't find themselves sleeping forever

on a bed of polenta-preening, displaying,

making a bella figura. An presage in his life.

I flew him to an English meadow

to investigation Dante, then Shakespeare's histories

in a king maple overlooking the Hudson

the cast:. himself, me my mate the beautiful Jane bird.

What are years? Not a herd of cattle,

perhaps a company of birds passing overhead.

Sometimes I hear him chirping my canzonet

louder than I at any time sang it.

One day, when the heavenly dogs and hell dogs

find me behind a bush and fight above me,

may one with a yielding mouth break from the pack

and take greatest in quantity of me to his Master. permit Him say Good dog,

good dog, what a peculiar kind of bird is this,

with his gray curly feathers and strange beak?

Have I at any time heard him sing? May it dawn on Him,

I am the bird with the beneficial son.

STANLEY Moss's novel and Collected Poems will be published by dint of Seven Stories Press in the spring of*2003

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