I’ve gawked for hours astride
the telephone lines,
my self-satisfied hop and strut
balancing the entire length of wire
while all the while I survey the street
with its glittering wrappers,
its squirrels and cats
and chattering college kids.
I am happy when the sky
is sad and the lesser birds
have flown away.
Then I soar the thermals
beneath the bridge
and above the river,
in love with the black
and white of snow and trees.
From the branches the noise
you call quarreling
is just the boasting of old friends:
guilty, unrepentant,
nobody’s angels or fools,
casting our outlandish jests again
and again to a wind that blows
through the ordinary fog of hours.
And if there are times I swoop down
to inspect the dead,
times I pause to allow a soul
its astral passage,
I still maintain for myself
it is enough to be perfect
only once, knowing I am exactly
who I was meant to be.
Copyright 2016, John Krumberger
John Krumberger has had poems published in Rhino, Great River Review, Comstock Review, Water-Stone, and Poetry East. His most recent volume of poems, Because Autumn, was published by Main Street Rag Press in 2016.