Killdeer

Father yelled “bird in the field,”
and though I saw its wings were longer & sharper-hooked
than the mourning dove’s,
his voice was bulletproof, deader serious
than when he left
the head of the dinner table
to fire at the solicitors
another, “we’re not interested.” So I moved
his twenty gauge in front of the killdeer
and sent the bundle of feathers
on an airborne slam dance
with the red clay dust. “That was a tough shot,”
he said, but when his hand
squeezed my own
I was not his good son, I was
the hollow
bones that allow birds flight,
I was a bluegill
thrown back
with a treble hook
still deep in its throat.

Thorpe Moeckel
Killdeer is from Odd Botany, (Silverfish Review Press 2002).