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 a peacock with his feathered hair

that stayed immaculate

even on the nights he lost to our hero

Wahoo McDaniel who never played the heel,

he who hailed from the lost tribes

of Oklahoma, who made us want to be chiefs

so much we wore pigeon feathers

and circled each other inside a green square

of water hose until someone finally rang the bell

that was never there and we sprung

toward each other like animals in love or at war.