He said he met two sparrows as he walked home—
one flying crazy-like, the other—crying, screaming, begging.
This made me think crazy of the rabbit I found as I walked home,
its body limp, a corpse over a leafless branch. It was almost
the grey of winter. No snow yet, it was just damn cold.
If this cold had a sound it might be the crack
of my 102 year old mother’s voice over the phone today.
We tell each other the weather.
There is a thread attached to my mother’s finger, looped around mine
but her mothering days are on the fade.
And I think back so long ago when I shed my virginity in secret
and I wonder if she wondered as I now wonder about my own girl,
about virginity lost and how love is pledged and hearts betrayed.
And I think the rabbit flung over the leafless branch had a mother
who probably did not know her child was dead.
And I wonder who tossed the rabbit like that?
All this makes me think about how I sometimes care
and sometimes, don’t care. I toss things away.
Boyfriends. Books. Broken promises.
And some days I lose everything, even the invisible star.
But let me explain. Hope is the thing.
It’s simply the ordinary.
The extraordinary.
This November it’s really about my mother, her voice cracks more now
and it is bone cold outside and like sparrows or rabbits,
she waits the wait.
Note: After John Murillo’s “Upon Reading That Eric Dolphy Transcribed Even the Calls of Certain Species of Birds,” his poem “Variations on a Theme by Elizabeth Bishop,” and after Emily Dickinson.
—Carol Young
Carol Young (Instagram) is a Chinese American writer born in San Antonio, Texas and currently lives in New England with her family. In addition to Radar Poetry, Carol's work may be found in West Trestle Review, SWWIM, and The New York Times. She is a 2025 Finalist for the Plentitudes Prize for Poetry. Carol is a graduate of the MFA in Writing program at Pacific University, an Anaphora Arts Fellow, and a Kwame Dawes Mapmakers Scholar. She works in the music business including the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival.