Beside a dead canary I whisper, you are not dead, <br />lipstick still on its wing, folded over a shadow. <br />Canary, who first told you about mortality? <br />Your mother in the ochre nest, or the hawk <br />who held your sister so hard against the sky <br />she disappeared? A boy watches a very old man <br />standing naked in the shower of a locker room, <br />the man stands utterly still with his arms at his sides, <br />his body rippled and varied as the water about him. <br />He holds his head down as one sentenced to death <br />but in his eyes he looks so in love, in love with a holy land. <br />Cars painted the color of candy follow one another. <br />Crows gather atop a roof, a black crown on the <br />blue-white supermarket, they cast shadows <br />the shape of sleeping children. When the crows alight <br />the children awake and scatter across the parking lot. <br /> <br />See, even shadows can’t stay here forever, Canary; <br />we who are the children of shadows can only lie <br />still for so long. This is what love is, <br />this is Bethlehem, and we are not dead.<br /><br />Paul Adler<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/bethlehem-2/
