The mockingbird crows like a rooster and he’s got the cycle of the car alarm down pat. He’s got them all down, the right timing. Everything. But the mockingbird’s tape seems frozen, he’s stuck in time, he’s listing, he falls off the TV antenna. Like a drunk. He’s the world’s biggest canary in the world. He falls off his perch when the opera singer leaps an octave, O mio bambino caro. He’s either in a jealous rage, or he swoons. It’s hard to tell with mockingbirds. The motel owner says the mockingbirds have been repeating the sound of the microwave for generations now. We no longer have that microwave, yet they teach its song to their young. The parrot not only rings, old school, rotary dial, but then he also answers the telephone, as if he were intercepting the answering machine.
N. Lake Tahoe
11/2001
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