NATURE BOY

      If I had enough cages to keep all the birds

      I’ve collected over the years then I would have

      to open a shop because there’s only so much room

      in a two-bedroom walk-up for 48 birds,

      not to mention the dancing bears and the frogs,

      or the different varieties of fish, the one

      species of flea, and I almost forgot the proud

      dogs and the lone mule, the profane one

      who entered my life to curse at scribes and pharisees;

      and maybe he’d let the mouse I found

      forever dying at the end of a poem

      ride on his back like a whiskered Christ

      and if not, maybe my yeti could do it

      when he’s not downtown working

      security at the store or teaching the parrots

      how to say brotherhood in grunt

      and how to comb out the tangles and mud

      from his hair, whose sweat reminds me

      of that bearded collector of beasts

      with the ark who would have no doubt

      understood how I feel, that prophet

      of change under whose spell I want to confess

      that I’m a Christian of the Old Testament,

      that my grandfather hung all his goats

      upside down, their throats over a bucket,

      and slapped their chests like that other Nature Boy

      who strutted around the ring

      like