Twenty-Seven Weeks     by  Al Rocheleau ARRO40@aol.com

At seven, I held it in my hand.

The sparrow baby
shorn from its egg,
abandoned by its mother
who was no songbird--

more like the successor
to archaeopteryx,
to a Jurassic past, cold
and culling out the small
and unfit heirs to a line of plasm
hurled through space and holding fast
to an earth just waiting
to release it, to oblivion
once again

and at last.

            ~

I hold his tiny hand.

Evan, who at twenty-seven weeks
has no business out of a womb,

down and skin, angular bones and
the same big eyes with draped-
on lids, similarly transparent and
waiting, just waiting to be thrown
from the third floor of a warm space
to the cold and prickly grass,

except your mother, Evan

blanched of blood yet turning pink
with new blood from a flask, decides
you are better than the fittest
you are hers, you are ours
and you answer in your thriving moments
every question every sparrow
or unthinking species
never even had

the chance
to ask.

   
 

Al Rocheleau has been a full-time staffer for the Poetry: Body Shop in the Writer's Block area of The Amazing Instant Novelist (AIN) since early 1996 (Keyword: NOVEL on AOL). He also is on the Editorial Board (for Poetry) at AIN, and writes the regular instructional column, Poet's Place, for AIN's The Write Stuff member newsletter.

Al has published more than sixty poems in magazines and journals in the United States, Canada, and Europe. Publications include Nedge: The Northeast Journal, Outerbridge, Pennsylvania English, Mobius, Artisan: A Journal of Craft, and Haight Ashbury Literary Journal; in these, his work has appeared alongside noted contemporary poets like Lyn Lifshin and John Tagliabue. A 64-poem collection, A Granite Symphony will be published by Alpha Beat Press this year. (Alpha Beat Press has published work by Allen Ginsberg, Diane Wakoski, Gary Snyder, and Charles Bukowski.) A second, new collection, Munchkinland and Other Poems, was recently completed.

For the past two years Al has co-hosted a poetry chat/workshop at Orca's Place (a former Atlantic Monthly site), and also, as his "real" job and livelihood, edits and publishes a popular managed care-related journal for providers of alternative health care. He resides in Orlando, Florida with his wife Georgette, and three children.

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