that squirrel chirping from the limb
of a mature buttonwood tree
sounds a hell of a lot like a grackle
if you don’t know what a squirrel
or a grackle sound like. which you don’t.
you go home, tell your wife you heard
a strange grackle over on monroe street,
and she sighs, yeah? that’s great, turns the tv up.
you do a bit of grackle research
but don’t bother to listen to recordings
of their dozen songs, none of which
sound like a fucking squirrel.
you realize there’s a dearth
of grackle appreciation groups in your city,
so you start one based on the enchanting
call of a squirrel you assumed was a bird.
the group gets out of hand quickly.
300 people join on facebook, unleash grackle theories
which have nothing to do with that song
you heard emanate from the buttonwood—
someone says all grackles are spies,
another posts a link to an obscure concept
called “grackle loss” that implies grackles
haven’t existed for decades and we’re only
seeing and hearing the memory of grackles.
you think, that can’t be right. seems far fetched.
but at this point your group splinters.
factions and rivals argue and plot takeovers.
there are rumblings of armed conflict,
so you leave the group, close your tab
which has grackle-recordings a button-push away,
any of which might lead you to question
if you had actually heard a grackle.
Brendan Walsh has lived and taught in New England, South Korea, Laos, and South Florida. His work has appeared in Glass Poetry, Rattle, Maine Review, The American Journal of Poetry, and other journals. He is the author of seven collections of poetry, including concussion fragment, winner of the 2022 Florida Book Award Gold Medal and november ninth (dipity press, 2024). He co-hosts the Fat Guy, Jacked Guy podcast with Stef Rubino, and you can find him online at brendanwalshpoetry.com.