Robert McDonald
Today on My Walk I Was Thinking of Sparrows
all the kinds of sparrows there might be in the world, house sparrows, and wood sparrows, maybe beach sparrows and pine sparrows, or grass sparrows, and I thought of the untold millions, all the sparrows who’ve lived through all the long years this earth has known sparrows, and I thought of the wind, that sound in the trees, a green wave made of the small ghosts of sparrows—it’s their job: to turn the maple leaves over, green side to silver, I don’t make the rules, that’s what the ghost of a sparrow is born to do, that, and knock the blossoms off catalpas on quiet city streets. In this task they will be aided by the oncoming storm.
City of Crickets
If I crossed the river I might be the train. If I were that river, I’d grasp the skinny hard feet of the bridge. If I were the bridge, you would marvel at my patience, you’d love my love for the quick arc of birds. If I were a train I would startle those birds. Shush, I’d say. Settle down, return. And the pigeons, after fleeing the whoosh and the noise, would fly back, sheepish, and smooth their feathers; they’d fix themselves in solemn rows along the trestle. Moments before they’d flashed in the sun, a wheel of angels, you might see them that way if you rode the train. If you rode the train I could be the janky tree of heaven, and plant myself in a spit of land bordering the tracks, a citizen who has emigrated to the city of crickets, founded in the widening causeway cracks. In the span of time between one train and the next, you will hear the one repeated note of our anthem.
Robert McDonald’s first book of poems, A Streetlight That's Been Told It Used to Be the Moon, is coming from Roadside Press in 2026. His work has appeared in 2 Rivers View, Action/Spectacle, I-70 Review, The San Pedro River Review, The Madrid Review, and West Trade Review, among others. He lives with his husband in Chicago.
