How many songs live inside the mockingbird's throat?

[kdmitche]

I finally wrote a poem about that mockingbird.  It's short and I think it might have more to say (the mockingbird certainly does), but alas I must scoop out the litterboxes, shower and get ready to go to my sister's.  We haven't seen them since baby Kalie was born back in March, so I'm looking forward to the visit.  Yet I wish I could stay home and read and write, just relax.  I'm always going.  Running here and there and everywhere.  I love to walk, but I feel like a floating bubble that might eventually pop.  This feeling may partially come from my job.  I'm enjoying it, but it is difficult bouncing around all the time.  And I need to get a backpack.  I love my kitty bag, but it's always stuffed full and hurts my back and shoulder sometimes, especially in the AM and PM commute between parking lot and office.  My sister is making hamburgers and we're taking beer.  I think my sister needs a drink.  She has no time for herself with a two-month-old and seven-year-old.  Her mom (not my mom...we were adopted and have different moms) helps a lot but drives her nuts.  She always has some comment or criticism.  I wish we lived closer.  Then I could help her.  On the way we're going to stop by the library so I can pick up some CD holds that came in.  Now that I have an iPod I can start putting all of my favorite music on there so I don't have to keep checking it out from the library.  Well, I'd better get busy.  Here's the poem, or poem-in-progress.  I wanted to use the mockingbird as a metaphor for myself, or maybe all people who have an idea of who they are but keep changing and trying out new things and ideas to move closer to understanding themselves.  Sometimes I wonder if I (we) will ever really know our true selves.  Often it seems like others know us better than we do, but yet they can't know everything unless they burrow into our brains like a worm and listen.  The chameleon wouldn't work for what I'm trying to convey.  It's not a drastic outward change, more of an inside thing.  Some folks might think that the mockingbird isn't being true to itself because it sings everybody else's songs.  But maybe it's the most honest bird of all.  It isn't afraid to try new things and what other bird can remember and recite that many songs?  I know, I'm getting rambly.  Like that mockingbird, I just keep talking.  Here's the poem now, really.

Singing in Tongues

The mockingbird is noisy this year.
He keeps repeating himself from high

atop the uppermost branch of our pear tree.
A Tower of Babel with wings, he cries

with a thousand voices, tricking us (and himself)
into believing we are not alone.  We hear

this over the television’s blare: the hawk and sparrow
singing together as if they were one bird.